Against All Odds
by Beastbot X
Summary: "Season 8"/Final Season Premiere. The X-Men and the Brotherhood combine their forces as they attack Genosha, but against so many Acolytes, will even their best be enough? Thirty-first in my X-Men Evolution series.
1. Chapter 1

"Against All Odds, Part I"

by Beastbot

_(Author's Note:__ A heads up here- this is the beginning of the final season for my X-Men: Evolution series. To allay a few concerns—I've planned this to be the final season for quite some time, since about the tenth fic of this series or so, so you don't need to worry about the ending being rushed or anything. Plus we've still got a ways to go, what with this being just the beginning of "Season 8" and all. Plenty will happen between now and the end, I can assure you of that! Thanks to all of you who have favorited me, my stories, and/or left comments—it's always nice to know my writing is appreciated. Now, on with the final season!__)_

* * *

"_Then out spake brave Horatius,  
the Captain of the Gate:  
'To every man upon this earth  
Death cometh soon or late.  
And how can man die better  
than facing fearful odds,  
For the ashes of his fathers,  
And the temples of his God_.'"

-from _The Lays of Ancient Rome_, by Lord Thomas Macaulay

* * *

"This is so totally weird, bro… and yet kinda familiar at the same time."

"I know what you mean," Scott nodded back to his brother, looking out the front of the Blackbird at the positively alien view in the night sky outside the cockpit window, far on the horizon. "You're here with us again, helping us out—"

"—but if we win, this time I'm staying," Alex interrupted.

"True," Scott said back, though privately he thought grimly, _That's a pretty big if_.

"But I mean, all of us coming up on this… this Genosha place, and it's surrounded with a big energy dome. That's just… yeah."

"At least Apocalypse isn't behind it this time," Scott said.

"Yeah, it's _just_ over a hundred Mutants instead," Alex replied back.

"You weren't there, Alex," Scott said, shuddering. "Apocalypse, he just had this _presence_, this… no, as much as I am not looking forward to the fight ahead—I really doubt any of these Acolytes will have that-that _feeling_ of evil incarnate."

*_This is the Velocity, registering five bogies exiting the energy dome,_* cracked Beast's voice over the Blackbird's comlink. *_Most are flying, though a few are being carried. No, scratch that—now there's twelve._*

"Understood, Hank," Xavier said from his position in the pilot's seat. "Everyone, get ready for anything. Stick to the plan, no matter how dire things may look."

"How can they get out of the dome if we can't get in it?" Magma asked.

"They've got to be temporarily lowering the force field to let them out," Maverick replied from his seat next to her. "We can't see it because, from what our instruments are telling us, there's a radiation dome UNDER the force field, the latter of which is translucent. I'm not sure WHY there's such a field around Genosha now, though."

"I still don't think they are going to do what we want them to," said X-23 as she pressed a button to lower the platform behind the cockpit seats. "There are so many holes in the plan, all they would have to do is—"

"Well, let's pray that they don't," Xavier interrupted, now yelling as the wind howled into the aircraft's interior. "Iceman, get out there, try to keep them at bay for as long as possible. Everyone else that doesn't have projectile-based powers, make sure your seat belts are securely fastened."

"On it," Iceman said, unbuckling his seat belt and stepping onto the platform, which raised up to become part of the Blackbird's "ceiling" again, with Bobby now standing on the roof of the aircraft. Seconds later he jumped off, turning the water to ice beneath him and beginning to construct the usual 'ice bridges' that allowed him to stay in the air.

"Looks like Storm and Angel are out of the Velocity," Sunspot said, pointing out of one of the Blackbird's side windows.

*Closing within targeting distance now, Charles,* Beast's voice said over the comlink again.

"Alright then," Xavier said, "Let's see just how well this goes. Cyclops, Havok, Magma—don't worry about the windows. Fire off if you think you can pick a target."

* * *

Within a few more seconds, it was absolute chaos outside. Hearing a projectile coming in from behind, Iceman promptly ended his ice bridge, letting himself fall as the fireball passed over him before beginning the bridge again and sending out an ice blast at the flying Acolyte wreathed in fire who had attacked him. It hit the Acolyte directly, but the flames covering his entire body incinerated the ice almost immediately.

_Duh, of COURSE that would happen_, Iceman thought to himself. _You keep ignoring things like that and this whole mission will fall apart, Bobby. Stupid, stupid, stupid_…

Iceman looked to his right as he felt a cry of pain emanate from Angel, who had taken a lightning bolt in one of his wings from… Storm?

It only took Bobby a few seconds to figure out what was going on. Storm's expression showed her disbelief, but he caught out of the corner of his eye one Mutant—being held aloft by another with the power to control wind—using short jerking motions with her hands. Given how closely the movement of her hands matched Storm's awkward motions, it was apparent that, somehow, Storm was her "puppet"—though it couldn't be through a direct psychic connection. Xavier had installed mental blocks in all of them to prevent just that sort of thing from happening.

_Just goes to show you, against this many Mutants you can't be prepared for everything,_ Iceman thought to himself as he readied an ice salvo—only to have another lightning bolt crash into the "puppet master". With a scream she fell unconscious, though still held up by the wind-controlling Mutant's powers. Tracing the direction the lightning bolt had come from, Iceman saw that Surge was the culprit, standing at the edge of one of the Velocity's doors, her gauntlets primed and standing beside the Scarlet Witch, who was also sending hex bolts flying at passing Acolytes.

_Okay, so maybe asking them to help us out WASN'T that bad of an idea…_

One was down, but there were more flying Acolytes entering the fray almost every second. Iceman did a quick glance around and guessed at least twenty were now attacking them all.

Storm, now back in control of herself, sent a strong gust of wind at Angel, blowing him back towards the Velocity where those at the open side door took him back in and tended to his injured wing. Focusing, lightning bolts shot out in every direction from Ororo's body, catching two of the flying Acolytes in mid-air and sending them falling into the ocean a couple dozen feet below.

Iceman barely had time to admire the view before another fireball flew his way—this one he just barely managed to escape from. It was the same flame-wreathed flier as before, who now apparently had a bone to pick with him. Iceman decided to focus on another target, and this time picked a green-haired girl who was using some force—whether it was telekinetic or magnetic, he didn't know—who was trying to slow down the Blackbird, and was beginning to succeed. He flung a barrage of sharp ice shades at her, only to have them shot out of the air by a volley of sharp quills—another Acolyte that looked like a human porcupine was being held aloft by the wind-manipulator's powers, and had managed to intercept the volley.

Iceman turned around as he felt the sound of a loud impact come from behind him, and found that some female Mutant with insect-like wings had shot some sort of flaming blob of corrosive acid from her mouth at the Blackbird. The blob began to eat its way through the cockpit, and another blue crystal-skinned flier, this one flying through no obvious means, zoomed through the sky, punching a hole through the Blackbird Cannonball-style before emerging out of the other end, unharmed.

With the odds becoming more stacked against them each minute, it was clear that they were really starting to get overwhelmed, and fast.

* * *

"Yo, how much longer 'till we get to land already?" Toad urgently asked from his seat near the middle of the XM Velocity. "Given how few of us can fly an' all, we ain't gonna last long like this!"

"About two minutes," Beast said, "Though with the rate things on the Velocity are breaking down from all these attacks, our speed is starting to decrease."

"So in other words, we ain't gonna make it there in this thing."

"Doesn't look like it," Beast sighed.

"Alright, everyone cling to Freddy when we go down, then!" Toad yelled out. "Ultra-sized life raft, here!"

"Very funny," Blob said from his seat next to Toad, half-heartedly taking a swat at Toad, who easily dodged. "Hey Pietro, can't you or 'Riko just run across the tops of th' water to Genosha?"

"Not enough of a running start," Pietro said. "Need I remind you there's about a two-hundred-foot or so drop to the sea right now?"

"And electricity and water don't mix," Noriko yelled from her position at the side of the Velocity after letting loose another bolt of electricity at a passing Acolyte flier.

"We're getting killed out there," Storm said, flying into one side of the Velocity and landing rather haphazardly. "I can't muster up the weather in time to really start striking back—and even if I could, I don't know if I could get it localized enough to affect the attacking Acolytes, but not the Blackbird and Velocity as well."

"S-so should I get the backup generators going?" Multiple asked, splitting into two.

Beast winced as a glancing blow from some sort of plasma energy bomb outside caused the cockpit windshield glass to start to crack.

"Do it," Beast said. "Let's just hope this all works." Pressing the comlink button, he continued, "Mercury, go for it, and godspeed."

* * *

It all seemed to happen so suddenly—almost simultaneously.

One blast to the Velocity, a swift strike of wind at the Blackbird—and then a large explosion sounded from one, then the other. Trailing smoke, both of them began to spiral into the sea.

The Acolyte known as Chamber barely managed to dodge as a wing of the Blackbird broke off and spiraled towards his position in the air.

_The 'birds are down! _Chamber telekinetically "said" to the other Acolytes in the immediate area—at the speeds they were traveling to keep up with the aircraft, the winds were too high to make regular yelling audible to others. Chamber couldn't, anyways. His mouth—along with part of his body—had been destroyed by a telekinetic burst of flame when his powers had activated and which now surrounded his entire form. Ever since then, normal talking had been out of the question for him. _Get the Iceman, he's still standing!_

A few Acolytes still flew around, making sure that the planes did indeed hit the ocean—hard—and begin to rapidly sink, while the others focused on the sole X-Man still ice-bridging his way around the sky.

At first, it seemed to Chamber that Iceman had given up—just like the two aircraft, he abruptly let his ice bridging stop and, taking a diving motion, plunged into the water. Chamber looked in confusion at the other Acolytes who had turned their attention to the last X-Man, all of whom merely looked back and shrugged.

Then, as quickly as he had entered the dark nighttime ocean, Iceman emerged again on an ever-lengthening bridge out of it, and aimed a couple of ice blasts at them. Chamber barely managed to dodge the first one, being so surprised, though he and the other Acolytes quickly got their act together. With so many Mutants firing different forms of energy at him, Iceman couldn't dodge it all—a particularly large ball of flame Chamber launched at the X-Man hit its target directly, and Bobby simply exploded from the impact, small shards of ice raining down into the sea.

_Hahah! _Chamber "yelled" in triumph, pumping his fist in the air. _So much for your "bluff", X-Man!_

Turning his attention to the flying Acolytes that had been circling where the two jets were sinking—the very last bits of the aircraft now slumping into the ocean and out of easy eyesight—Chamber sent a quick telepathic message to them.

_They gone? How are we looking, here?_

*Not seeing any signs of them surfacing over here,* said the insect-winged Mutant into her comlink, who was hovering directly over where the Blackbird had crashed. *None of them can breathe underwater, right?*

_Don't remember that in the briefing Magneto gave us, _Chamber thought back. Tapping the heat-resistant earpiece he had on, Chamber "called" to the other Mutant who was closest to the Velocity's landing site. _Wind Dancer, anything different there?_

*Same story,* said the hovering Acolyte over her own comlink. *I'm not seeing any signs of a struggle.*

_Alright, let me check in with the boss ladies to make sure they're down_, Chamber thought back. Aiming his thoughts at a more distant, specific target, Chamber asked, _Five-in-One, you all reading any more Mutant signatures besides us?_

_ They've rapidly gone dark in the past fifteen seconds or so_, said one of the Five back—Chamber never could tell which one was which. They even _sounded_ the exact same. _We're still detecting two- no, make that one now. Just one Mutant signature left._

_ What's the exact position?_

_ You know we can't tell, Chamber. Our Cerebro is the same as the X-Men's—it can pinpoint Mutant signatures down to within a mile or so, but that's it. Whoever it is, it's in your vicinity. That's all we can tell._

_ Alright then, I'll tell the others to spread out and look for them,_ Chamber thought back. _Probably just someone who managed to get a bigger gulp of air than the others before going down—but even if it isn't, it's just one Mutant. They won't be able to do much against all of us when we find 'im._

_ Still, make sure you do a thorough search. It's too dark and too far out right now to send our water-breathers out to check the wreckage itself, and it'll take a little while to fire up the few submarines we have. We'll tell you if that last Mutant signal blinks out._

_ Will do_, Chamber thought back, and closed the telepathic connection. After telling the others the orders, they began to scour the surface of the ocean around where the two aircraft had gone down.

Practically invisible to them under the low red light given off by the Genoshan dome into the night sky, a slightly glimmery, thick-looking puddle of fluid in the ocean quickly floated towards the island in the distance.

* * *

Kurt didn't know what to feel.

There was shock, first, that Magneto had actually shoved a metal spike through Mystique's chest.

Once he yanked it out and Mystique fell to the floor, blood forming in a puddle around her, the shock slowly went away, replaced by….

Replaced by…

He wasn't sure yet.

Was it still shock? Some kind of different, hollow shock that he hadn't experienced yet?

Again, he wasn't sure.

He wasn't sure when Magneto turned back towards him, eyeing him with a mixture of pity and disgust.

He wasn't sure when Magneto kicked him in the face, sending him reeling back to the floor.

He wasn't sure when Magneto abruptly stopped, his comlink opening up and telling him… something. Kurt wasn't really paying attention. It stopped Magneto from beating up on him, though, so it must have been fairly urgent.

He wasn't sure when Magneto picked up the key to Kurt's manacles with his magnetic powers, opened up the cell door, and then shut it behind him with a loud clang.

A few moments later more important things popped into his mind, though, as he heard Mystique stir.

"M-Myst—mother?! Are you—are you alright?!" Kurt cried, scrambling on the floor and getting as close to Mystique as he could, with one of his arms and his tail still in the power-nullifying manacles.

Just a few feet more, and then they would've been able to touch.

"K-Kurt…" Mystique coughed, a bit of blood bubbling up through her lips. "Don't be a fool… I'm… I'm dying…"

"Is there anything I can do?!" Kurt asked. "Some way I can patch it up… some way your powers can maybe heal you from this, if you… if you assume another form?"

"You're… *cough* … grasping at straws, and you know it," Mystique said weakly. "Hit me in my aorta, punctured one of my lungs… I'm bleeding out, fast… You know my powers don't allow me to shapeshift like… *cough* …like that, I could only do that when I was… one of Apocalypse's…"

"There's got to be—"

"Shut _up_, son, and listen," Mystique gasped sternly, before breaking into a coughing fit that looked incredibly painful. "I'm already… already struggling to… keep awake… not much time…"

"No… no, don't say that!"

"The X-Men… my Brotherhood… they're all coming here, but… but you need to let them know. There's more… going on here than just… them defending their ground…"

"How do you know all this?! How can I—"

Kurt stopped himself as Mystique, a slight smile on her face, reached into her pocket and took out a key that looked exactly like the one she had used on Kurt's manacles, and slid it towards him.

"A bit of advice—always h-have a backup," Mystique said, her eyelids starting to flutter. "Now, there's a *COUGH* safe room… exactly two fl-floors up, twenty f-feet south of our p-position…."

"Mother… please… please don't die," Kurt said, tears starting to stream down his furry cheeks. "I already thought I went through this once, I can't—"

"You can," Mystique breathed, her voice now a mere whisper. "…and you will. Now… make sure that Magneto… pays for all this…"

"No… no, please don't…"

"F-for wh-what it's w-worth… I wish… wish things could have… worked out… diff….f…"

Then there were a long, wet-sounding wheeze, a shudder, and then Mystique was silent, her eyes still staring at Kurt.

Kurt just knelt there, weeping over his dead mother. He wasn't sure how long—it could've been a few minutes, it could've been half an hour.

Eventually the tears stopped, and that feeling… that unknowable, hollow feeling—it appeared again, in his stomach.

Kurt slowly lifted his head up, his eyes focusing on the key before him. Numbly, he took the key Mystique had slid towards him and undid the remaining two manacles before crawling over to Mystique. After a few moments, he quietly, softly, closed her eyelids.

Breathing out a long sigh, Kurt stood up, focusing on the key on his hands.

It took a few moments, but he finally realized what that feeling was.

It wasn't sadness, it wasn't rage, it wasn't shock. It was a feeling… a feeling of bitter resignation.

Resignation that before he left this island, he would have to kill Magneto.

Because if the events of the past few months had made anything clear, it was that Magneto had to die.

For the good of everyone. For every_thing_. For there to be any hope for a peaceful future. There could be no mere capturing of him this time.

Kurt held the key Mystique had given him tightly, picked up the bloody spike of metal Magneto had left behind, then teleported out of the room.

* * *

"What's wrong?" Magneto said angrily, entering a room few Acolytes had seen. Those that had called it the "hub".

"Nothing is wrong," said the Five-in-One simultaneously, all of them connected to Cerebro Mark II headsets that, in turn, were connected by wires into the bright yellow "reactor" in the center of the room, which was responsible for supplying energy to the entire island. "We just wanted to report that the Blackbird and Velocity are both down. Our teams out on the water report no survivors."

"None?" Magneto said. He raised an eyebrow, but the facial gesture wasn't noticeable with his helmet on. "None at all?"

"Our Acolytes performed better than you expected," the Five-in-One said. "It took barely more than a minute to down the aircraft."

Magneto sneered. "Show me the visual."

The Five-in-One glanced at each other and nodded. With an apparently mental gesture, a large image came up on a large vid screen at one end of the circular chamber, showing the group of Acolytes hovering around where both wrecks had gone down.

Magneto strode up to the screen and glared at it, squinting his eyes.

"I don't see any bodies," Magneto said, turning back to look at the Five-in-One. "Where are the bodies?"

"Uh… there are not any bodies as of yet," said the member of the Five closest to Magneto. "They likely became trapped under the rapidly-sinking aircraft. However, the wreckage has been submerged far too long for any of them to still be holding their breath, and—with the exception of one, perhaps one who does not require oxygen to breathe—all of their Mutant signatures winked out shortly after they went down."

"You IDIOTS!" Magneto roared, backhanding that member of the Five down to the floor. The other four at first made a move to help their sister up, but decided against it at the time. "I've known Xavier for far, far too long—there is no way they would go down THAT easily. I know—and you SHOULD know—that these X-Men don't die like that. They'll fight to their last breath, no matter how hopeless the cause—if nothing else, they have endless courage, even if they are also hopelessly deluded as a result."

Beginning to walk out of the hub, Magneto said behind him, "Get our water-breathers down there, NOW. Same with all the subs. And have any fliers patrolling around the entire perimeter of the island. They're still out there, somewhere."

As soon as the door shut, the four immediately took off their helmets and helped their sister up, who wiped a bit of blood from her lip.

_So, _thought the one who had taken the hit from Magneto, _Should we listen to him?_

_ For now, Sister, _the other four answered. _For now._

* * *

"Are you SURE you've sucked all the moisture out of there? It's completely air-tight? Because if I open it and it's not…"

"I'm sure, Havok," Iceman gasped from the other side of the submarine's mostly see-through hull. "Now, open up the hatch before I _suffocate_."

Havok obediently opened the sub's hatch, wincing as he did so—but Iceman's "airlock" made out of ice formed from the ocean water held, and he climbed in, Alex quickly closing the latch behind him.

"Have the other subs already split?" Iceman asked, taking a seat.

"Yes," Colossus said back, his attention on the ocean view in front of him as he steered the sub slowly and carefully, paying attention to the sonar readings. Piloting a mini-sub in coastal waters at nighttime without any lights on was a bit risky, to say the least.

"Good, then we're ahead of schedule, I guess," Iceman said. "Good idea on that fake-out, Cyclops. Worked like a charm."

"Hey, you were the one who did it," Cyclops shrugged. "Though when you faked a duplicate of yourself during class that one time, that was actually what gave me the idea. Plunge into the dark water where they can't see you, then use your powers to send a 'fake' Iceman back out so that you could fake your own death."

"Who says playing pranks is a waste of time?" Iceman smirked, leaning back in his seat.

"You weren't the only one who faked your own death," Wolfsbane replied back. "All'a this would've been a waste o' time if Professor X hadn't commissioned those special X-Jets."

As the Professor had told them the previous night, the airships they had flown into battle were MADE to be destroyed—that was why additional, "normal" copies of the Velocity and Blackbird were back at the Institute. The ones they had flown in had two mini-subs inside each, with a hidden hatch at the bottom of each aircraft to let the mini-subs quietly out after the aircraft wreckage had begun to sink.

They knew they were at a severe disadvantage over the water, so such a deception was necessary for them to get to land, Xavier had said. The Acolytes would eventually figure it out, but since they had entered at the dead of night, it was too dark to see the subs escape. They were equipped with visual cloaking fields as well that made them nearly invisible to the naked eye, just in case Magneto had subs of his own.

"So, who's in charge of what?" Iceman asked.

"Well, obviously this sub has myself, Havok, Magma, Colossus, Wolfsbane, and you," Cyclops replied. "We're heading towards the south end of the island. Sub 'B' has Maverick, the Professor, X-23, Husk, and Sunspot—they're heading to the east side. Sub 'C' has Beast, Hisako, Angel, Avalanche, Multiple, and Quicksilver. They're heading to the west side, which leaves Storm, Surge, Moonstar, Toad, Blob, and the Scarlet Witch manning sub 'D', heading for the north end of the island."

"Divide and conquer, eh?" Iceman said.

"We've got to draw their resources in as many different directions as possible," Cyclops said. "We all come onshore in one place, they can concentrate every Mutant on Genosha at that spot and do away with us in no time. Plus, without… without any sort of information on the layout of Genosha that we were supposed to get from Jean's team, we're just not sure where the most important buildings are, anyways. This way at least one team is fairly close to that area of the island, no matter where they are."

"Aaand we just sit there?" Iceman asked quizzically. "I mean, it's not like we know how to penetrate the force field they've got around the whole island."

"That is not entirely true," Colossus piped in.

"Yeah, we're waiting for Mercury's report," Cyclops said. "Remember, the force field—whatever it's made of-has to let in air and a small amount of moisture, otherwise it wouldn't be long before they'd suffocate in there. It can't be absolutely impenetrable like Apocalypse's domes. Given that Mercury IS liquid, she just has to spread herself thin enough that the field will let her through. Then she can find out how to shut that field down."

"Yeah, IF some doesn't find her and IF she can figure it out within a few hours," Iceman whistled.

"Hey, it's the least risky of all the plans we came up with," Magma said. "Do you have any better ideas?"

"No… just sayin'," Iceman said.

An awkward silence overtook the sub as it moved forward slowly in the ocean, everyone turning their thoughts to all the different ways this risky endeavor could fall apart.

* * *

_That….hurt._

It was a strange sensation, spreading herself so thin along a section of the force field out on the water that she could see—and feel—everything from the top of the water down to the ocean bottom. The shield had given off slight sparks when she had first touched it, again when she had tested it after spreading herself five feet longer, then again when she was another five feet wider….

Apparently she had eventually gotten through, but she had blacked out temporarily from the effort of stretching herself so far.

She had woken up on the inside shore—well, scattered in small blobs along the shore—but from the looks of things, she hadn't been out for long. It was still dark.

Slowly, and with much effort, she began to pull herself together, one blob of mercury flowing into the next, then another, then another…

It was incredibly confusing and disorienting, "seeing" so many different images—one from each part of herself—and having to orient the different parts to collide with each other. The stars above—even dimmed as they were through the odd red radiation inside the dome—helped quite a bit.

Cessily figured she was about halfway done pulling herself together when she heard a couple of voices coming her way, and immediately every bit of her collapsed into a shallow puddle on the ground in the hope of not being noticed.

"…telling you, I can see heat," said one of the Acolytes coming her way, a young white female with no discernible physical mutations. "There's nothing here."

"They don't have to be _here_," said another one, this one African-American with a yellow visor over his eyes. Flashlights pored over the area, but thankfully the little silver puddles of mercury hidden amongst the shore flotsam didn't get their attention. "You know how our Cerebro works. There's an enemy Mutant signature somewhere within a mile of this shore, maybe two. But they can't pinpoint it, so the Five need us to find… whoever it is."

"This whole thing is stupid, Prodigy," said a red, scaly Acolyte with webbed fingers and toes as he began to wade into the water. "Whoever it is, they're clearly _outside_ the dome. There's no way they coulda gotten in. They're trying to keep us distracted."

"Well, even if they are, there's more than enough of us to go around," the one with the yellow visor replied. "Check out the cove anyway, Squid, just to be sure. We'll cover the ground area. My ability to absorb knowledge isn't going to matter here, since they're sure to have mental blocks in them, just like with the ones we captured."

"Yeah, yeah," Squid muttered before submerging beneath the surface, his flashlight apparently waterproof.

Cessily saw Prodigy gesture directions to the female—now several dozen yards off—who nodded back, and both of them ran further off from Mercury's position.

Figuratively breathing a sigh of relief, Cessily began to pull herself back together again—but this time, she made sure to keep flat against the sand.

After having to pause a couple more times over the next several minutes whenever a flashlight beam strayed her way, she finally pulled herself into one puddle.

_Hrrmm, it seems like the pieces of material that Hank made my uniform out of—whatever it is—is grouping back together. That is impressive… I'll have to thank him for that later._

Quickly oozing into the grass and out of sight, she crept in the direction she had seen the three Acolytes come from.

* * *

Kurt grabbed another banana from the pile and unpeeled it.

He knew he couldn't stay here much longer—but he was just so _hungry_. After having been fed little more than water and a few stale pieces of bread for weeks, the plethora of tropical fruit from the island sitting here in Mystique's "safe room" was too much to resist.

_This is the last one! _Kurt reminded himself as he began to gobble down the fruit, wiping the bits of it that fell from his mouth off the small portable screen he was currently digesting information from.

His late mother had been up to quite a lot during the days she had spent in Genosha…

_…And the days you spent in a cell half-starved to death,_ Kurt thought to himself—but quickly pushed such thoughts from his mind. She _had_ eventually gotten him out, hadn't she?

And this safe room, it was WELL stocked. Plenty of food, weapons, a computer pad filled with Mystique's notes… it was apparently a large storage closet of some sort, but there was a file cabinet barricaded across the door to prevent anyone from crashing her party. Of course, judging from the two dead bodies in the room, her party HAD been crashed… but she had assuredly dealt with it discreetly. Judging from the records she had left for him if her plan didn't work—there was that last advice of hers, poking its head again—she had actually posed as the two she had killed at separate times shortly afterwards to allay any suspicions. A small blinking headset had been left behind with a note taped to it. It said:

_Put this on. It'll keep your mind guarded from psychics._

Needless to say, Kurt had quickly done so.

There was also a small camera mounted on the inside of the door, but it kept jerking back and forth in an odd motion. Kurt wasn't sure what his mother had done to it- perhaps caused it to cycle back old footage?—but it clearly wasn't working correctly.

Regardless, Kurt had learned quite a lot about the layout of the island from Mystique's notes—far more than he and the others on Jean's team had learned during their brief, interrupted stay here. She had taken on several different personas, killed several different Acolytes—and yet still remained hidden, in the shadows, away from Magneto's apparent notice until she had tried to free him. Her resistance to any sort of telepathy had obviously helped her to blend in quite a lot, but still… Kurt had to admit he was impressed at the sheer depth of knowledge she had gained about the place. She had even managed to build a small sea-faring submersible in one of the island's shore caves in her spare time, big enough for two and no more—apparently what she had been planning to get them away in.

_So much for that…_

Mystique hadn't been able to find out everything about Genosha—such as what was generating all this electrical power for the island, and where—but it was certainly enough to help the X-Men, if they were coming like she said they were.

_"If"…. Listen to yourself, Kurt. It's Mystique. Of course they are_.

He also had to admit, Mystique's little wrench in Magneto's plan was rather brilliant—far more than simple sabotage, and more subtle—and as far as Kurt could figure out the Acolyte leader still didn't know anything about it, and wouldn't until it was far too late.

Still, that also meant the X-Men wouldn't know about it until it was too late, either. That could have disastrous consequences, too.

_If only I knew where they…_

Kurt almost jumped out of his fur as a small silver puddle trickled into the room from a nearby vent. He just barely kept himself from instinctively teleporting out of there.

"Cess—" Kurt began to shout, spitting out chunks of banana-but abruptly stopped himself, took a deep breath, and whispered, "_Cessily?!_ Is that you?"

"Who else would it be?" Mercury smiled, the puddle quickly rising up and forming itself into her humanoid form. "Thank God you're al-alright, Kurt! I feared—we _all_ feared—"

"How did you get in here?" Kurt asked. "Wait, forget that, how did you know where I was?!"

"I…. I dunno," Mercury said hesitantly, shrugging. "Once I managed to get through the force f-field, I just crept along until I found a building I saw a bunch of Acolytes coming from. There was one that seemed to have more Mutants guarding it than the others, so I assumed th-that was where you were. Luckily no one n-noticed me, I slid down into the vents, and it only take me a few minutes to find you. Guess I t-took the right turns."

"Well—good! Listen, we have to hurry—"

"—You know how to shut down the force field?"

Kurt grabbed Cessily by the shoulders, his tail absentmindedly picking up the bloody metal spike behind him as he did so. "Mystique… she's…. she's been busy, Cessily. She busted me out of my cell, and now I know _everything_ she knows. Let's save the details of how we got here later, and get that field down before someone spots us."

Cessily nodded, and with a BAMF, they both vanished from the room.

* * *

A split second later, they both reappeared in a corridor that appeared like many of the others—however, a look out the window at the end of the hall revealed the sun coming up over the ocean on the horizon. It was a rather picturesque view—from the looks of things, they were in a tower near the middle of the island—but there was little time to admire the scenery.

"Hey, what the-?"a purple-skinned young male Acolyte that was in the hallway blurted out, turning from where he had been looking out of the window to see the unexpected visitors.

"It's here?" Mercury said, turning to face the incoming Acolyte as her arms reformed into scythes.

"No," Nightcrawler said, "The actual generator is too heavily guarded and electrified—"

"This is Indra to all available Acolytes!" the purple Acolyte yelled into his wrist communicator, protective plate armor quickly forming over his body as he rushed towards the two infiltrators. "Two X-Men in Central Tower, I need support ASAP!"

"Just take care of it!" Mercury yelled, running forward to engage the bulked-up Acolyte.

"Right," Nightcrawler said, and teleported onto the other side of a bulky metal door in front of him. Inside was a small room with a large bundle of wires running up the wall, and a detailed control panel in front of it.

"No doubt shutting down the power via the control panel would involve a bunch of safety protocols," Nightcrawler mumbled to himself, his tail depositing the metal spike he had brought into his hands. "Good thing there's an easier way."

Nightcrawler leapt up onto the wall, shielding his face with one hand as he readied the bloody spike over the wires with the other. "Now, Magneto, let's make sure that the weapon you killed my mother with… is also the same weapon that will be the beginning of the end for your 'empire'."

With a grunt, Nightcrawler plunged the spike into biggest wire he could find. Bolts of electricity immediately arched out all over the place, beginning to fry the blue Mutant—

-But he teleported out of the room the instant he had let go of the spike, landing smoking on the ground of the hallway outside.

Nightcrawler lay still for a moment, groaning, before pulling himself to his feet. "I think I'm going to… feel that one for a while…"

Rubbing his head, he looked out the hallway window to find the shield—which had been warping the view of the sky outside—flicker a bit, then finally drop. The red radiation field was still up, but… that was a problem they could deal with later. That would be considerably harder to shut down…

"Cessily, I—we did it!" Nightcrawler said joyously, turning around to congratulate his fellow X-Man—but he only found Indra slumped on the floor, unconscious.

"…Cessily?" Nightcrawler asked again, louder this time.

Still nothing.

* * *

"….Aaand I've just gotten the signal from Xavier that the dome's down!" Storm said from her position at the front of the sub. "Mercury did it!"

"Time to party," Surge said, rubbing her hands together as the sub began to rise up towards the surface.

"'Bout time," Toad said. "Staying this silent in th' water for this long… Claustrophobia was kickin' in."

"You don't _have_ claustrophobia," Wanda said, irritated. "Out of us, only Storm has that, and even _she_ was able to keep it together for something as important as this."

"Well fine then, just call it a phobia of death!" Toad replied back, exasperated. "Friggin' sitting ducks down here-"

"Be quiet! We'll be topside in less than a minute," Storm interrupted, her temper already short. "So listen up, because we haven't got much time and it won't be long until everyone on Genosha figures out what's going on. As soon as we reach shore and open up the airlock—Surge, do a quick survey of the place, report back as soon as you can with details of the layout."

"Understood," Surge nodded.

"Blob, you will lead the way, provide a protective front. Surge will join you there once she reports back. I will keep to the air, make sure no one tries to pick our group out from up there. Wanda, you stay in the middle as best as you can, direct your efforts to whomever needs help. Moonstar, Toad, you two cover the rear."

"'S what I'm best at!" Toad grinned, giving Moonstar a wink, who merely shook her head in response.

"What about the radiation field?" Moonstar asked as the sub broke the surface of the water. "That's still up. Is that going to hurt us?"

"It hasn't seemed to hurt any of the other Acolytes inside," Storm said, "But I'll admit we're in unfamiliar territory. Hopefully we'll get information on it soon, whenever Mercury manages to make it back to one of our groups and make her report on where we're supposed to focus our efforts."

Surge got up out of her seat and steadied her hand against the sub's hatch as the marine vessel passed through the edge of the radiation field, everything taking on a slight reddish tint as it did so. A few seconds later, the sub ground to a stop as its bottom began to strike sand.

"Alright, as soon as I get on shore, I'm outta here," Surge said, turning the hatch open. "See you in a few minutes… if you're lucky."

* * *

The Five couldn't help but twitch as the metal door to the Hub burst off its hinges, clanging to the floor as Magneto angrily stomped into the dome-like room.

Granted, they knew he was coming, but still.

"_What is going on_?!" Magneto yelled. "The force field has dropped, and no one I talk to seems to know why!"

"It would be much easier to converse with you if you would take off your helmet," the Five all said, turning to face their leader. "With it on, we can't contact you with updates."

"I shouldn't _need_ updates," Magneto said, his volume lower but his tone still razor sharp. "We outnumber our opponents more than ten-to-one. We have all this technology—and _you_—at our disposal. Why should these X-Men be anything more than gnats to us?!"

"They've clearly thought this through," one of the Five said, turning back to look at the readouts on the virtual screen in front of her and her sisters. The other four also went back to work, visual images on the various screens changing almost constantly. "None of the Acolytes reported a breach in security in the actual room containing the power supply for the field generator, so the X-Man that somehow bypassed the force field must have destroyed the feed. Either that, or—"

"—Or what?!"

The one talking lowered her gaze to the floor. "We received a report about fifteen minutes ago—Nightcrawler is gone from his cell, all of his restraints unlocked."

"_Mystique_," Magneto seethed. "Even in death, she still manages to muck everything up."

"Given that Mystique was here for so long, it would stand to reason she found out at least _some_ vital information about our network. She likely passed on that information to Kurt, somehow, and given his powers, it wouldn't have been hard for the teleporter to take out the power somewhere along the way. At least… at least he doesn't know about this room, otherwise he likely would have come here first."

"Why can't you track him? It took time, but you cracked Xavier's mental block in him, as well as the rest of the prisoners'. You should be able to read his mind easily."

"We checked as soon as we got the message that he was missing," the Five replied. "Somehow he's been able to cloak himself from us again. We're not sure how."

"Then tell Blink to search everywhere. I. Want. Him. _Dealt with._"

"Yes, Magneto," the Five all said in unison.

"And triple the security around the other cells," Magneto said, turning around and beginning to walk out of the room. "We can't have any of our other guests being freed because the teleporter is."

"Yes, Magneto," the Five repeated, "But—"

"But?!" Magneto sneered, turning back around towards the quintuplets. "What _else_ is there?"

"We've just received word that four different subs have surfaced, at equidistant points around the island. Their Mutant signatures popped back onscreen at the same time. The X-Men and Brotherhood members—along with a few other Mutants who have opposed you in the past—have emptied and are making a run towards the largest central building—towards here."

"WHAT?!" Magneto bellowed, the entire room starting to creak and groan as the metal walls bent inwards slightly. "I had you send search teams everywhere. Their jets went down. You told me they were all _dead_, save one."

"We… we said their signatures went offline," the Five replied, refusing to meet Magneto's burning gaze. "That's… not entirely the same thing. The submarines—we imagine they were contained within the aircraft—are shielded somehow from our mental scans. They must have been waiting for the shield to go down to make themselves known."

"What about our water-breathers?" Magneto asked. "Why weren't they spotted then?"

"We're not sure," the Five said sheepishly. "A visual cloak as well?"

Magneto looked ready to explode in anger, but abruptly he stopped, took a deep breath, and calmed himself, his gaze drifting towards the floor.

After a few seconds of silence, Magneto spoke again, his tone once again more measured, but with a lethal edge to it.

"Alright. Here's what we're going to do. Get every available Acolyte. Divide them into four groups of roughly equal size. Send them at the four different invading teams."

"Yes, Magn—"

"_I'm not finished_," Magneto snapped, before his tone became softer again. Taking off his wrist communicator, he flung it at one of the Five, who caught it smack in the face before it dropped to the floor. She fumbled awkwardly for a second, then managed to pick it up. "I'm keeping the helmet on, but I will grab another one of these before I leave this building. You _will_ keep me up to date the second something happens. Do. You. _Understand_?"

"…Y-yes, Magneto."

"You'd better," Magneto said before turning around again with a sweep of his cape, striding quickly out of the Hub.

The Five waited a few moments, making sure his footsteps receded in the distance, before they began to mentally converse with each other.

_I don't think he's going to wait much longer. He's going to kill one of us if we let him down again, and with that helmet of his on, we can't do much about it. His magnetic powers are stronger than our telekinetic abilities. Should we tell him about—_

_ No, Celeste. I don't think even that would calm him down at this point. Best wait until the X-Men are dealt with—or he is._

_ Do you really think the X-Men stand a chance?_

_ They've made it this far… albeit not entirely by themselves._

_ You know he wanted to level the playing field. Just Mutant versus Mutant, he said._

_ Indeed. It is… fair, in a way. No force field to interfere with a real fight any longer._

_ Oh, please. What about this is _fair_?_

_ She's right. We still outnumber them—_

_ I know. But still—do we get involved yet?_

_ Not until the outcome is determined either way, Phoebe. If we do it a second before then, _we _lose, no matter which side wins._

* * *

It was chaos, and getting worse by the second as more and more Acolytes arrived.

Magma planted her palms on the ground, and after a few seconds of increasingly loud rumbling, magma burst from a huge fissure that opened up, the force of the eruption pushing back both sides.

"Woah, Magma!" Havok yelled as he shielded his face from the intense heat with one of his arms, "Watch it!"

"Sorry, I…" Magma yelled back, her expression uncertain as she stood back up, "I… didn't mean to make it THAT large."

"It won't hold them back long," Colossus said, "Wolfsbane, do you think you can do the fastball move? Like we practiced, in the Danger Room."

Wolfsbane—in her half-wolf form—nodded, and leapt up onto one of Colossus' arms.

As the magma spewing out of the ground began to—oddly—freeze, Colossus reached back, Wolfsbane in his palm.

A moment later, the flying blue Acolyte with crystal-like skin burst through the frozen wall of lava, other flying Acolytes following her through.

Wolfsbane roared as Colossus threw her in the air towards the blue crystal Mutant, who got hit square in the face with a feral X-Man. Rahne began raking her claws into the flying Mutants' back, who screamed in response, struggling to stay in the air.

Cyclops aimed an eye blast at an incoming flying Acolyte, letting it rip when they got close enough to ensure he got a direct hit. Havok—directly to the right of him—let loose another salvo at the Mutant, sending him spinning back into the frozen magma wall and knocking the Acolyte unconscious.

"Y'know, bro," Havok said as they picked a new target with their powers, "I'm feeling a little bit… amped up right now, if y'know what I mean."

"I think it's just the heat of the battle," Cyclops said before letting loose another beam salvo. "You haven't had too much experience with this kind of action, Alex."

"No, I mean… I'm a bit more psyched-up, sure, but a bit… angrier… my hands don't hurt as much… my hand-beams are starting to pack a bit more of a punch…"

"Wait a minute," Cyclops said, connecting the dots to what Alex was saying. "You mean—"

"Yeah," Havok said, looking at Cyclops as he saw one of his brother's hairs abruptly turn a grayish white. "This… this radiation field… I think it's just like that nuke machine on Asteroid M, but on a larger—MUCH larger-scale."

"But it's still got to be coming from the same source—ugh—that gem of Cyttorak," Cyclops replied, interrupting himself as he rolled from a ball of plasma that had been tossed his way.

"…So it's taking a lot longer to affect an area this large," Havok finished.

"We're all still in danger," Cyclops said. Raising his voice, he turned on his comlink, "Listen, everyone! This radiation field—it's from the gem of Cyttorak, the same thing Magneto used on some of us back on Asteroid M! Since it's covering all the island, it's going to take a lot longer, but… he's nuking—super-evolving—all of his Acolytes at once! And now that we're here, it's going to start affecting us too!"

*It's been a long time since he took it from me,* X-23 replied back over the comlink. *I was wondering when it would show up again.*

*So what's the problem?* Toad's voice came on over the same channel. *We get stronger powers. I ain't seeing the downside.*

*Remember, it's also going to brainwash us,* came Beast's voice. *Make us loyal to Magneto, if it's anything like the last one. I imagine he hasn't told that part to his 'loyal followers'. This must be how he's going to deal with commanding such a large cadre of Mutants without worrying about insurrection…*

*I'm guessing the towers all around this island are what are powering this field?* Husk said. *Given that at the top they're all glowing a bright red, same color as the radiation around us… Should we focus our attention om the towers?*

*No- this changes little,* Xavier's voice came on. *By the time it really manages to affect us, we'll either have been victorious… or we'll have failed. If we've won, then it will be a fairly simple matter to turn it off and reverse its effects. If not… well, we'll be no worse off.*

*Wow. _That_ was really inspiring,* Avalanche said sarcastically.

*Just keep up the attack!* shot back Storm.

"Alright. Cyclops out."

Before he could react, a large, blunt force hit Cyclops in the back, forcing him to his knees. Looking up, he saw a tall, lithe teenager with beams of multi-colored light swirling all around him briefly before they faded away. The teen also had organic steel skin—just like Colossus.

"Hope you don't mind that I _synched_ up with your friend's powers," the teen said, "Not that it matt- aaGGHHH!"

Before either of them could react, a silvery liquid substance shot around Synch's face, little slivers of the liquid digging into his mouth, ears, and eyes.

"Get him NOW!" Mercury said, her appendages now all stretched around the Acolyte's body.

Cyclops and Havok both fired full-blast at Synch, who screamed as a hole began to be carved into his stomach. Mercury leapt off of the Acolyte, just as he fell to the ground, smoking and clutching his eyes.

"Should I finish him off?" Havok said, his hands glowing with energy

"Except for Magneto's A-Team, incapacitating them is as much as we're supposed to do, unless there's no other option," Cyclops said to his brother before turning to Mercury. "Cessily—THERE you are! Man, I was worried—how did you get the force field down?"

Cessily raised an eyebrow as her limbs solidified back into their normal proportions. "I was just about to ask _you_ the same thing."

"Wait," Cyclops said, taking his hand off the side of his visor for a second and standing straight up. "You _didn't_ figure out how to disable the force field?"

"No," Mercury insisted. "I don't even have a _clue_ as to how it happened. I've been sneaking around this island for a few hours now, and haven't gained a single lead. I was just about to slither into another of those side towers when the field just… dropped."

"Then who…?" Cyclops began, before he was interrupted by a carbonadium tentacle snaking its way around his neck and pulling him backwards towards its owner—Omega Red had joined the fray.

* * *

Nightcrawler looked grimly at the scene unfolding at the edges of the island.

From his vantage point—near the top of the center tower of the island—he could see the entire coastline. In all four directions, the X-Men and their allies were trying to converge towards the center—and having a terrible time doing so.

It was a bit hard to make out at this distance, but he could see the Acolytes piling up on his friends. Even splitting Magneto's forces into quarters, their advance was starting to be repelled by sheer numbers. Kurt expected it wouldn't be long until the Acolytes began to outright turn the tide, forcing the X-Men back to the beaches.

Just as he expected—and just as his friends expected, to be sure.

After teleporting all around the tower and finding nobody except that unconscious Acolyte within the surrounding couple of levels, Kurt figured Cessily had either been quickly captured or had taken off of her own accord—perhaps some mission that took priority over making sure Kurt had disconnected the force field lines successfully.

As urgent—and serious—as such an objective would probably be, Kurt sure hoped it was the latter.

That still didn't explain why none of the other Acolytes had shown up at the tower, though. Kurt had heard the Acolyte specifically call for reinforcements—but none had every showed up. Why? His first thought was that they must have been too occupied attacking the invaders, but something told him it was more than that.

Since he had given up the search for Mercury, Kurt briefly considered a few other options.

He could return back to the cells and try to free his captured teammates, but he quickly scratched a mental line through that idea—for now, anyways. The cells were probably very heavily guarded by now, and he didn't want to risk his—or his teammates'—lives when he wasn't even sure if the key Mystique had given him would work on the others' manacles.

He could also try to shut the radiation field down, but according the Mystique's information every relay tower around the island was responsible for the field—the Cytorrak gem had been cracked into several pieces with one in each tower, so just shutting down one or two wouldn't work. He was sure that even teleporting, the Acolytes would catch on to his aims soon enough and stop him before he could destroy enough of those towers to make a difference. As for how the towers were getting their power—they all had to be activated by some single source, but Mystique hadn't been able to find out where such a potent energy source was, and Kurt couldn't just teleport around blindly.

He had just made the decision to teleport down to one of four teams to see how he could help when he saw a flash of purple light behind him and a hand clutch his shoulder tightly.

"THERE you are," Blink grinned. "Let me show you an even BETTER view."

"Wait, don't—" Kurt began to say before, in a blink of light, his view of the interior of the tower was replaced by—

_No. Oh, no._

His eyes couldn't believe was he was seeing, but the feeling he abruptly began having—feeling like his eardrums were about to explode, instinctively letting out his breath because of extreme pressure that abruptly built inside his chest—

His eyes turned down towards the dark side of the globe, far, far below them both.

Blink had teleported them both into orbit.

* * *

Moonstar backed away a few steps onto the beach as one of Storm's lightning bolts—one of the largest and loudest she had ever seen—struck the ground right next to Chamber, temporarily toppling (and deafening) the Acolyte keeping him from throwing any more flames at the team.

Meanwhile, Wind Dancer sent a gust of wind at Toad, knocking the Brotherhood member off his feet. A hex field quickly surrounded the flier courtesy of the Scarlet Witch, however, and the wind quickly died down.

No sooner had the flier fallen out of the sky, however, then a humongous maggot-like creature—who appeared to be one attacking Acolyte's symbiotic pet, of sorts—bit into the Scarlet Witch's knee. Wanda screamed in pain, but Blob quickly yanked the giant maggot off of her and flung it away.

And so on it went. A power was countered by another power, which was countered by another power, which was countered by another, ad infinitum. Moonstar had sent more than a few Acolytes packing from induced mental nightmares, but with her powers spread so thin it just meant they came back a minute later. Surge had come back a few minutes ago, telling them that she wasn't able to break into anything that looked important—hardly surprising, as Moonstar was sure by now the island was on lockdown. In lieu of any real plan, given Cyclops' information they had soon decided to move towards the nearest radiation-spewing tower, in the hope Moonstar could get into its systems and shut it down. But, as more and more Acolytes joined the fight, anything their little team could throw at the enemy was being quickly countered—and it was showing, as they ceded more and more ground. Only a thin stretch of beach lay between Moonstar and the water.

"This is getting boring," muttered the sand right beneath Moonstar's feet.

Before she could even comprehend what was going on, Rockslide burst from the ground, his huge hand quickly gripping her by the neck and lifting her up as he assumed shape from the surrounding soil, a mix of condensed sand and bits of rock.

"Time to start from the back and work my way forward," Rockslide grinned.

Moonstar tried using her powers to creep into the elemental's mind, find his greatest fear and make him think it a reality—but she wasn't finding anything.

"Yeah, sorry I'm not running scared," Rockslide said, punching Moonstar full in the face, which broke her nose and sent a tooth spinning out into the beach sand. "But mental powers don't work on me. My mind's not… normal, I guess you could say."

"Moonstar!" Toad shrieked, spotting his teammate in trouble. "Hold on, I'm comin'!"

"Oh, please," Rockslide said, rolling the white pinpricks of light that passed for his eyes. Turning his head a little to the left, Rockslide launched the hand not holding up Moonstar like a missile, straight at Toad's position. The fist of sand hit Toad like a wet, heavy sack, downing him and leaving a pile of sand and rock on top of him.

"Let's take care of you quickly, before I get interrupted again," Rockslide said. Sinking his body into the ground to roughly his waist, Rockslide continued forward towards the water, seemingly traveling through the soil itself.

"No… no, please don't…" Moonstar managed to eke out, blood flowing down her lips from her nostrils.

"Yeah, that's not really gonna work," Rockslide smirked as he traveled down into the water.

Moonstar gulped what little breath she could as the elemental Mutant pulled her under the waves several feet—and then just held her there.

Moonstar kept it in for as long as she could, but eventually she let out a gasp reflexively, gulping for air and only sucking in sandy salt water instead.

Rockslide stayed there, a smirk on his face as Moonstar struggled, hitting at his arm to no avail, flailing… until she finally, slowly, stopped struggling.

Rockslide waited several seconds, still keeping a hold on Moonstar's neck just to make sure it wasn't a bluff. When he was sure she was dead, he let go of her limp form and disappeared back into the sand, heading back towards the shore where his other enemies awaited.

* * *

Nightcrawler felt Blink's hand muscles flex as she released him from her grip—but this time, he was prepared for it, wrapping his tail around one of her legs.

The light that began to emanate from Blink abruptly faded. She looked at Kurt in fury as he turned around in the weightless environment to look at her, a slight smirk on his face despite the pain he was experiencing.

_Can't exactly leave me here when I'm still attached to you, now, can you?_

Blink—the vacuum environment clearly affecting her too, as she let out a gasp of oxygen despite herself—dug her nails into Nightcrawler's tail in fury, little droplets of blood escaping into space.

Kurt nearly uncoiled his tail reflexively, but he grabbed Blink's right arm with his left, holding on for dear life as she tried to take a swing at Kurt, only to miss the first time as Kurt dodged.

The second time though, her shot connected, socking Kurt in the side.

Kurt's eyeballs felt like they were going to explode, and he was sure it wasn't going to be long until his eardrums burst.

_Just hold on, she's dealing with this just as much as you are…_

Nightcrawler kicked at Blink's hand still digging into his tail, but causing her to reflexively pull it back.

For the next several seconds, a weightless, slow-motion boxing match went with mixed results, Blink trying to knock Kurt out while Kurt just tried to dodge everything.

Still, Blink couldn't get Kurt to let go of her with his tail, even after she connected a kick right between his legs.

As little droplets of blood began to seep out from their eyelids, Blink apparently decided that she had had enough, and in a flash of light, they were both gone again.

* * *

They both reappeared on the Genoshan beach—at least Kurt was pretty certain it was the Genoshan beach, given the red tint everything had. Waves of water, sparkling in the morning sun, lapped at their feet and hands as both he and Blink collapsed to the ground, heaving and hacking from the effects of being in a zero-pressure environment. Neither of them had the strength to do anything but kneel there next to each other, alternating between breathing in deeply and coughing for several moments, Kurt finally uncoiling his bloody tail from around Blink's leg.

Judging from the faint battle sounds coming from his left side—Kurt was fairly certain his right eardrum was either punctured or simply not working correctly from the extreme pressure changes—Blink had teleported them both far away from the fighting. Kurt thought he heard the faint sound of what sounded like a helicopter nearby, but he simply didn't have the energy to look up and find out what, exactly, was causing that odd whipping noise.

After a few more moments of alternating between hacking and breathing in deeply, Kurt heard Blink gasp out, "You…. you're tougher… than I thought…. Blue Boy. But let's see… how you when handle it… when I teleport a boulder… right on top…"

A sudden metallic CLANG interrupted her, however. Looking over, Kurt saw Blink slump to the ground, unconscious. He saw a circular shadow fly back towards the ocean water in a boomerang-like pattern, and the splash of footsteps nearby.

"Ohmygod… Kurt! Kurt, are you alright?" he heard a familiar voice say before the interloper helped him to his feet.

Given his bedraggled, pain-ridden state, it took Kurt a few moments to realize who that voice belonged to, particularly given that the person holding him up looked a bit… different… than he remembered. The hair was different, the uniform was different, but it was obviously her.

It appeared that, as much as Kurt had experienced in the past few hours, the surprises were still going to keep on coming.

Coughing out blood, Kurt managed to shakingly gasp out a single, simple question, though he already knew the answer to it.

_"….Kitty?!"_

To be continued…


	2. Chapter 2

"Against All Odds, Part II"

by Beastbot

"I know, it's been a while….and I'm so, so sorry I left you guys," Kitty said. "But it's me, Kurt. I promise. What's going on? Where did that other teleporter _take_ you?"

"Outer space," Kurt mumbled. After looking at Kitty's unsure stare back, he continued, "No, that's not a joke. Not at a… *cough*… time like this."

"Then it's a miracle you're still conscious," said another, male, voice. "We've got to get you back onto one of the helijets for medical attention ASAP."

With Kitty now supporting him, Kurt managed to gather enough strength to lift up his head and turn his field of vision up at the individual who had just spoke—someone who was significantly taller than either of them.

Kurt let out another dry chuckle as he took in the star-spangled superhero standing before him, who was re-affixing his circular metal shield to his forearm, having hurled it a few moments earlier at Blink to knock her out.

"Captain America?" Kurt laughed nervously. "Now I know I'm dead. Or unconscious. Or hallucinating…"

"You're not hallucinating, son," Captain America said, moving one of his index fingers back and forth in front of Kurt's eyes and tracking the furry Mutant's pupil movement. "Not suffering from a concussion, either, though you've definitely gotten some internal bleeding, judging from what you've been hacking up there on the sand."

Signaling with one of his hands for someone outside of Kurt's field of view to come help him, the Captain continued, "Shadowcat, I'm going to need you to help get… Nightcrawler?... here onto a stretcher."

"Got it," Kitty nodded as two medics wearing S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms ran up in between the two X-Men and Captain America, carrying a white cloth stretcher in between them as they lowered it down to about knee height.

"Alright Kurt, right leg up," Kitty continued to a rather bewildered X-Man as she began to lift up one of his sides. Given the unbelievable scene playing out before him, Kurt numbly did as he was told. "…Urf… alright, get that tail there too, you guys, get it… aaand…. Good."

Kitty let out a sigh as she let go of Kurt gently into the stretcher. "I bet you've got a lot of questions."

"Just a few," Kurt said, smiling lazily as the medics began examining his wounds and listening to his heartbeat while Captain America continued to gesture to other personnel outside of his field of vision, a dozen or so S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers passing by them, equipped with weapons Kurt had never seen before. "Let's get the important one out of the way first, since I'm not gonna believe that other guy who should've passed away about eighty years ago. Am I dead?"

Kitty couldn't help but smile. "No."

"Okay," Kurt breathed, "That's… that's good. Now, what's up with all the S.H.I.E.L.D. helijets I've seeing *cough* coming down here? Why are they here? Why is Captain America here? Why are _you_ here? What's with the new outfit? That's just… y'know, off the top of… *cough*…my head…"

"Alright, he's stable enough to carry back to the nearest helijet," one of the medics intervened. "His left eardrum has burst. Shadowcat, you're going to want to keep talking to him on the side you're on. One lung is slightly punctured, but if it's not aggravated any more we can get it fixed up. Let's walk and talk back to the helijet, folks."

"Well, first off," Shadowcat said raising her voice more as the sound of the helijets became louder, the group of them starting to wade their way into the water, "Made the outfit myself. Admittedly it was a bit of a rush job."

Kitty's new outfit had ditched the color purple in favor of yellow, which was along the shoulder pads, wrist guards, belt, and on two straps on her right upper leg, which held additional paraphernalia in a manner similar to a tool belt. The rest of the outfit was made of a black material, with a higher collar than her old costume, though there was a gap that bared her midriff and her bare fingers poked through holes in the fabric at the ends of her arms, as opposed to the purple gloves she used to wear. In addition, Kurt noticed that Kitty had cut her hair since he had last seen her—there was no more ponytail, with her straight brown hair now ending slightly above the chin.

"But why? Are you working… for S.H.I.E.L.D. now or something?" Kurt asked.

"Ummm… see the 'X' symbols?" Kitty said, pointing to the red letters on her shoulder pads. "I've got an 'X' on the belt, too. So yeah, still an X-Man. Unofficially for now, anyways."

"So then how…?"

"Kurt, I understand you're, like, _really_ confused right now, but we're a bit short on time, and-"

"Actually, we're a LOT short on time," said a familiar white-haired colonel with an eyepatch, who just entered Kurt's field of vision as his view of the morning sky above quickly transitioned to the interior of a helijet. "Especially since, officially, we're not even supposed to be here."

Kneeling on the edge of the helijet, Nick Fury continued, "Nightcrawler, you and your little friend here can chat later. We've got a lot more important things to worry about right now. We already have a general layout of the island and the situation, but is there anything you can tell us about Genosha right now that would be particularly… helpful?"

"Oh, DO I," Kurt said, smiling weakly. "You might want to *cough* take notes, Colonel Fury. This is going to take a few minutes."

"Before I do," Nick Fury said, "I need you tell us the comlink frequency your team is using. I want to make sure Xavier can get mental blocks in all of us before we head out."

* * *

*Magneto.*

Magnus stopped his approach down the hallway towards the jail cells and held a finger up to the side of his helmet, under which was a comlink, reaching around his ear with a small microphone extended towards his mouth.

"Five-in-One. I trust you have _good_ news this time?"

*Partially.*

Magneto glowered. "Explain."

*All four of the invading teams have been driven back, nearly to the sea at this point. However, they're about to get… help. We're picking up about four dozen new mental signatures, arriving on the northeast shore of the island, most of them spreading out.*

"Mutants?"

*Three of them are… at least according to our scanners. One of them is Nightcrawler, another Shadowcat, the third… unknown at this point. Some of them aren't mentally shielded, but the number that aren't are… dwindling. Someone must be employing some sort of technology or Mutant power at the moment to hide them from us. As for the rest of the signatures, they're human. They're…. reinforcements from S.H.I.E.L.D.*

Magneto couldn't help but mutter a curse before responding. "I thought S.H.I.E.L.D. was dispersed after the Nimrod incident. Do they have Sentinels?"

*We're doing quick mental scans on the ones still vulnerable…. No. No Sentinels. But—*

"Then let them come at us," Magneto interrupted. "If they don' t have any Sentinels, they're nothing for us to worry about."

*-BUT.* the Five-in-One responded, their tone tinted with just the slightest hint of annoyance. *They're carrying some kind of new technology….blasters modified from… Nimrod tech. They…. they can temporarily nullify Mutant powers.*

Immediately the entire hallway around Magneto creaked and groaned, buckling in towards the Acolyte leader as he clenched his fist. Inadvertently, he also caused the comlink he was wearing to quickly become twisted and warped under the extreme magnetic fields being manipulated, and it fell to the ground, sparking.

Magneto merely stomped on the malfunctioning comlink and responded to the Five-in-One the "traditional way".

_Then continue to focus the teams on eliminating as many of the X-Men as possible before S.H.I.E.L.D. reinforcements can arrive, _Magneto thought. _As for those who aren't facing the invaders, concentrate them around the main building. Make SURE no one can enter the Hub! I'll take care of things around the cells—if things continue to fall apart, I may have to use the prisoners as hostages. Magneto out._

There was mental silence for a few moments before the Five-in-One finally responded.

_…Understood._

Magneto stomped further down the hallway until he emerged in a large underground chamber with several thick steel doors at the opposite end, four of them under heavy guard.

"Magneto?" asked the Acolyte Magneto recognized as M, a tan-skinned teenager he remembered as having superhuman strength and the ability to fly. "What's going on?"

"I don't know how, but somehow Xavier has gotten S.H.I.E.L.D. involved in his big assault, as well. All of you, get the remaining prisoners out here. If things go poorly, we may need to use them as hostages. Keep an eye pointed at them at all times, and kill them if you see the slightest hint that something is amiss_, is that understood_?"

"Yes, Magneto," said the eight Acolytes present, as they began to open the four cells that were holding the prisoners.

"Let's just hope my recruits out there are competent enough to keep things from coming to this," Magneto muttered to himself.

* * *

"Hard to believe things have come to this," Nick Fury said wistfully as he looked at the flashes of fire, ice, and other energy blasts coming from a few spots on the horizon. Captain America stood in front of him, binoculars up to the superhero's face as he scanned the island, motioning to the troops behind him with hand gestures. Passing to either side of both of them were most of the remaining squadrons of S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers armed with their new blasters, beginning to make their way to battles on the island that Captain America had directed them towards.

"Well, things might NOT have come to this if you hadn't completely dropped out from the X-Men's radar after screwing things so badly with Nimrod and everything," Shadowcat said as she walked up behind them, water dripping from her boots as she came up onto the sandy shore. A short distance behind the three were ten different helijets that were hovering just off the coast. A few remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers were quickly filing out of the five that weren't holding Nightcrawler, the weapons they were carrying beginning to hum with a pink energy as they began to charge them.

"I'm sorry, is the girl who quit the X-Men a few months ago lecturing ME on abandoning my duties?" Nick Fury said, turning around to fix Kitty with a glare as he took the ever-present toothpick out of his mouth. As Kitty's gaze shifted uncomfortably to the ground, he continued, "Besides, it wasn't my decision—our funding was cut, but now it's been reinstated in wake of the panic over the terrorist attacks on the registration centers."

"Really?" Kitty said skeptically, her gaze rising again to meet Fury's. "This was all just a spur-of-the-moment thing, huh? Then where did THOSE come from?"

Seeing Kitty point towards the guns the S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers were carrying, Nick Fury absentmindedly put his toothpick back into his mouth and continued, "Like I said, our funding was cut. Not eliminated altogether. Yes, those guns were _adapted_ from Nimrod's tech, but that's it."

"Just like Nimrod was _adapted_ from Sentinel technology," Kitty retorted, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Alright, I've had it up to _here_ with all of these questions," Nick Fury said indignantly, walking up to her until their faces were mere inches apart. "As I recall, you were the one who got a hold of US and asked to get a ride, NOT the other way around. So I expect you to do _what_ I say, _when_ I say it, and if anyone besides the X-Men ever asks you if we were here, you respond with a _negative_, you got that?"

"Ease up, Fury," Captain America said, putting away his binoculars and turning around to face both of them, all the squadrons having been directed towards their destinations. "She's been through a lot lately."

"Haven't we all, Rogers, haven't we all," Nick Fury muttered, though he nevertheless backed away a few steps from Shadowcat and towards Captain America. "So what's the layout, Cap? Can we get to the secret entrance or not?"

"Every team that I can see is being pushed back towards the coasts," Captain America replied, motioning towards the island as he did so. "The X-Men are being overwhelmed, and quickly. It'll be minutes before casualties start to mount, though since Shadowcat contacted their team leaders via the comlinks and relayed to them all of Nightcrawler's intelligence, they at least now know we're coming. If we're discrete, we should be able to get a small unit to the entrance… but from what you've told me about the old abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. facility on this island, the door is tightly sealed, and we can't carry with us ordnance that's heavy enough to take it out."

"So I'm going with this unit, I take it?" Shadowcat asked.

"Right," Steve Rogers nodded, "Though we're going to need to take a bit of a detour first, as you're not going to be able to do everything that's required by yourself."

"What gets me," Nick Fury spoke up again, "is that in spite of all the other crazy stuff Nightcrawler told us, he said that that headband his belated mother gave him was supposed to ward off psychics. But it's not working. Shadowcat, have you figured out what's wrong with it yet?"

"It's totally fried," Kitty said, holding up the electronic gadget Kurt had given to her after he had finished explaining what had happened to him. "Not only that, but there's no vibranium in it, and Beast explained to me some time ago that vibranium's the only known material that can keep out psychics—Magneto's helmet is made of it, after all. I've examined it rather thoroughly, and I don't have a _clue _as to what it's supposed to really do. It has a receiver array, so it's a transmitter of some kind… but beyond that, I'm not sure."

"A transmitter? I hope that doesn't mean what I think it means…" Captain America said.

"I think someone might have been toying around with Kurt, somehow," Kitty said reluctantly. "Not sure how or why, though. If we hadn't drugged him up with all those painkillers after he had relayed his info to us, we could ask him a bit more… but he was in so much pain, I'm kinda glad he's out at the moment."

"Regardless, we need to get a hold of Moonstar," Nick Fury began. "Shadowcat, Cap—you know where they are. Get to it."

* * *

"PAIGE!" Maverick yelled as the X-Man standing next to him took a fireball right in the chest, the extreme heat immediately igniting her entire body, given that its current composition was a flammable, acidic substance.

Husk choked as she fell down to the ground, a gaping, flaming hole beginning to form in her chest as, in extreme pain, her mental control over her gelatinous form began to slip.

The Acolyte who had launched the fireball—literally nothing more than a skeleton wreathed in fire, with no obvious means of talking—cackled dryly and advanced towards the rest of the small team.

"Get over there and help her, Maverick!" Xavier yelled. "I'll take care of the aggressor!"

"N…no!" Maverick grunted as four other projectiles almost simultaneously impacted him, the kinetic force being absorbed and then redirected back at the Acolytes. The huge blast managed to barely hit a flying Acolyte, sending her spiraling backwards, but otherwise it missed its intended targets. "Everyone knows you're a… priority target, Charles, and your concentration… is fading, I've noticed. I've got to stay here… protect you!"

"I just… I need some time install all these mental blocks!" Charles yelled as another barrage aimed at him was absorbed by Maverick interceding. "It's quite a demanding task…"

Driven back to the sandy beach itself, the team of X-Men didn't have much ground left to give. Maverick was acting as a shield of sorts for Xavier, who instead of his normal wheelchair, had switched to a sort of miniature yellow personalized hovercraft for better maneuverability on the field. Sunspot was currently trying to protect Husk, punching out any Acolytes who came near them, though he was obviously starting to get tired—his form was more hunched over, his super-powered punches and lunges more haphazard.

X-23 was the most adventurous among the small team of five, incapacitating Acolyte after Acolyte with her adamantium claws, not even bothering to dodge any attacks that weren't melee and letting her healing factor do the work as she hacked and slashed her way across the shoreline. In most cases, her cutthroat tactics would have made the difference, and they _had_ early on as the team advanced towards the nearest tower—but now there were simply too many Acolytes, and with the sheer amount of projectiles directed at her it was slowly starting to eat away at her faster than her healing factor could regenerate. It was all painfully obvious they wouldn't last more than a few more minutes.

"Charles," Maverick said as another Acolytes with superhuman strength downed Sunspot with a solid punch to the side of the face, "I know this is what we thought would happen… but if they don't get here soon…"

"Don't say such things," Xavier said, his mind temporarily abandoning its current task and focusing on another, the skeletal Acolyte on fire suddenly turning and flinging balls of flame at his comrades. "It's not over yet—"

Maverick looked about to respond to something, when a flying Acolyte streaked low overhead, dropping a Mutant onto Maverick who looked like he (she?) was made of simply a gelatinous blue blob with a humanoid skeleton and brain deep inside it.

"Yeah… yeah, it's over," the Acolyte burbled as Maverick—unable to redirect any real kinetic force—struggled to escape the blob as he was enveloped, cutting off the former H.Y.D.R.A. agent's supply of air.

"N-no!" Xavier stammered right before a pink ray blast struck the Acolyte in front of him. Suddenly—and with apparent great pain—the Acolyte cried out, the gelatin-like blob around his skeleton and brain beginning to liquefy as he began to "melt", freeing Maverick from its grasp a few seconds later.

The instructor gulped in a few precious breaths of air as the Acolyte literally fell apart around him.

Immediately multiple other pink beams filled the air—some of them missing, but many of them striking other Acolytes. The fliers they struck abruptly plummeted to the ground, the Mutants with projectile powers who had gotten hit suddenly were unable to launch further attacks, and the Acolyte Xavier had been mind-controlling abruptly crumpled to the sand, his flames dying out as he did so.

And just like that, a dozen or so S.H.I.E.L.D. troops emerged from hidden positions to the west of them, firing their pink laser-like weapons off into the crowd of Acolytes.

"I think…" Husk gasped from her position near the ocean, which she had apparently managed to ooze toward to put out the flames, "…that we finally got….help…"

"Husk… you're okay!" Maverick cried, wading out of the Acolyte that continued to dissolve around him.

"Glad they got me… in a state like this…" Husk managed to bubble out of her mouth. "I need a few minutes, though… solidify my form again… before I'll be of any more… help."

"Take a minute to gather yourselves… then follow us as we move towards the island's interior," a S.H.I.E.L.D. operative said as he ran up to them, pausing to take a shot at a fast-moving flier that was incoming, the blast causing her to lose control of her flight and slam into the shallow ocean behind them instead.

"Why are you here?" X-23 said directly, limping up to the operative that was communicating with them all, her form little more than bones and quickly-regenerating musculature at this point, with almost no skin still intact on her body. "We didn't ask for your help."

"Well, _you're welcom_e anyway," the S.H.I.E.L.D. operative replied, his lips twisted into a slight snarl. "Anyways, the other S.H.I.E.L.D. squadrons should have already met up with your team on the northern end of the island, and we're quickly advancing on the teams at the western and southern ends—we should be there shortly."

"Thanks for the save, friend," Maverick said, giving X-23 a stern look that essentially said, _Don't push it_.

"We're not done yet, not nearly," the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldier said. "We still need your help."

"Of course," Maverick said. "You DID just save our lives, after all."

"How many S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers do you still need to put mental blocks in?" the soldier asked Xavier.

"About twenty," Xavier replied. "But each one… expends a bit more effort. It will take time, and I'll be in such a state of concentration that I'll essentially be incapacitated for a bit. You'll also need to inform Colonel Fury that, with enough concentration, it has been shown that someone on this island CAN break my mental blocks, so it's not foolproof. Maverick, could you… stand guard for a bit while I do so?"

"Of course… but one thing first."

Maverick turned to the S.H.I.E.L.D. operative and made a hand motion to give him the power-nullifying gun.

"What? No!" the soldier said, instinctively backing away from Maverick a few steps. "This is S.H.I.E.L.D. property. I'm under orders not to—"

"You want Xavier to put mental blocks in all the shield troops?" Maverick interrupted, "Then give me. The. Gun."

"You heard him," X-23 said, surprising the soldier at how quickly and quietly she had snuck up behind him.

"I… why?" the operative asked Maverick. "You haven't had your powers nulled, you're in fighting condition! I need this!"

"I need it more," Maverick replied. "You've got the rest of your squadron. I'll be back here, just myself and Professor X. I need one in case I come up against an Acolyte I can't handle by myself."

The soldier hesitated for a bit, but finally gave into the stern look and tossed his gun to the X-Man. "Alright, fine. But you'd better give it back to us if-when—this all ends."

"Hrrm," Maverick said, looking the gun over. "It's definitely Nimrod tech, that's for sure. How long does it last?"

"Twenty to thirty minutes," the operative replied, "With the more powerful Mutants tending to get over it more quickly."

"Good to know," Maverick said, continuing to inspect the gun. "There's a weakness in this design, you know. All I need to do is reverse the power couplings and the gun will basically reverse the effects. Just something I thought I'd tell in case S.H.I.E.L.D…. you know… tries to take advantage of the situation once the Acolytes have been subdued."

"I…" the soldier said, his eyes betraying his surprise and fear for a minute before he regained control of himself. "…I should go. The other ones on your team here—they should probably come along. Even with our guns, we're still going to need help."

A recovering Sunspot, a recently-recovered Husk, and X-23 both looked expectantly at Maverick, who motioned for them to go along. "Keep an eye on _both_ sides, kids. Remember that."

"Got it," Husk said, her reformed acidic gel-skin peeling away to reveal normal skin underneath as the three of them followed the nervous soldier down the beach in the direction the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. troops had advanced.

* * *

"Toad, what happened?!" Blob said, pushing aside the heavy pile of wet sand that had been holding the Brotherhood member down.

"Ugh…" Toad murmured, slowly sitting up and rubbing his head as he took in his surroundings. "…You tell me…"

"We're still not completely sure," the Scarlet Witch said, walking up to where the two were and pointing back to where Storm and Surge were discussing something with a few S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers. "Storm was the one who received the communication from S.H.I.E.L.D. She told us to expect help, and then a few minutes later a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers showed up, all brandishing these weapons that seem to take away Mutant powers. With their help, we were able to drive the rest of my father's flunkies back… at least for now. Storm is discussing what our options are next, and Surge is… well, she's listening. To make sure neither of them decide to use those new weapons against us."

"You really think they'd do that?" Blob asked, scratching his head.

"Now? No," Wanda replied. "But if we manage to take out Magneto and the rest on this island? We'll have outlived our usefulness to them then, and then they'll wonder what to do with us- those guns being the most obvious answer."

"Alrighteveryone, quickupdate," Surge said quickly, zooming up right next to them before disengaging the electrical discharge from her gauntlets. "The same S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers that helped us? They're helping out the other teams on the island, too. The team on the south side of the island should be the last team they reach. Once that's done, all teams will be meeting up at a point a little north of the central tower and its surrounding buildings, where we'll all do one big final push to enter that structure. Even if it's not the most important building on the island, it's the biggest one, so it's got to have SOMETHING vital in it. Maybe something to shut down this radiation all over the island, I dunno. But the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldier said they needed Moonstar for something. Shadowcat and somebody else 'special' are on their way here."

"I thought Kitty quit the X-Men," Wanda stated, raising an eyebrow.

Surge shook her head. "I thought so too, but she's here. Apparently she was the one who contacted Storm and the others."

"Hey, speaking of her, where IS Moonstar?" Blob asked, looking around. "I lost track of her during all the fightin'."

Toad's eyes widened at the mention of the X-Man's name, and he immediately stood up. "Aw, crud… Moonstar! Aw, she was at the beach… Rockslide had 'er…"

"Rockslide?" Surge asked. "I never saw Rockslide around here."

"He snuck up behind us," Toad said over his shoulder as he hopped towards the water's edge. "Took me out quickly—no surprise there, I guess—and had Moonstar in a chokehold. Oh, man, if she ain't here, then he must've… taken her into the ocean…"

"So we are down one," Wanda said, shaking her head sadly. "She's not one of us, but still…"

"Not down one just yet—look!" Surge said, pointing a few dozen yards further down the coast, where a short female in an X-Man uniform was slowly crawling out of the ocean, stopping every few steps to vomit up a bit of salt water.

The Brotherhood members made their way up to the trembling X-Man as she crawled onto the beach, continuing to hack up water.

"But… she'd have been down in that water for a while by now…" Toad said. "No way she could've held her breath that long."

The Brotherhood members waited a few minutes for Moonstar to stop coughing up sea water before Wanda kneeled down and helped the trembling X-Man to her feet.

"What happened?" Blob asked. "How did you get rid of Rockslide? 'Cause, man—that guy's a real pest to get rid of!"

"I didn't," Moonstar said, her voice still wavering. "He held me underwater… thought I was going to drown, felt like… felt like my lungs were going to burst, but they just… didn't. And suddenly… suddenly I didn't feel like I needed to breathe anymore, but I played like I had suffocated anyways, so he would leave me alone… I didn't see where he went next…"

"Wait a sec, how can you just _not_ need to breathe?" Toad asked.

"As far as I can figure, I think my powers… I think they kicked in again," Moonstar explained. "It happened before—when I was stuck without food and water for a long time, my brain… put my body in a state of hibernation. And then when I tried to…well…mentally project an illusion into Nimrod's mind, my brain ended up… adapting itself to the situation, and since then I've been able to… 'read' computer code and re-write it. Now, when I ran out of oxygen… I think my brain adapted to that, and altered itself… so that I wouldn't _need_ oxygen."

"Wait, uh… I thought your powers allowed you to do that mind illusion stuff?" Blob asked, scratching his head.

"So did I, for a while—but that's just a side effect," Moonstar said, dusting the sand off her legs as she motioned to Wanda that she could stand by herself now. "My real Mutant power is the ability of my brain to adapt to survive—but only if it's a life-or-death situation, apparently."

"So, you not needing to breathe… is that permanent?" Wanda asked.

"Not sure," Moonstar shook her head. "If we all get out of this, I'm sure Xavier and Beast will want to get a look at me again when we get back to the Institute… I still feel awful, having all that sea water that had been sitting in my lungs… but at least I'm not… dead."

"Danielle!" came a familiar shout from further down the beach.

Moonstar and the Brotherhood members assembled around her turned to look in the direction of the voice.

"…Kitty?!" Moonstar said in disbelief.

"Yeah, she's back," Surge said. "Not sure why."

It wasn't long until Kitty ran up to Moonstar, both of them embracing each other for a moment, the other person that had come with Shadowcat still a bit further back on the shoreline.

"Kitty, what… what are you doing here?!" Moonstar asked as they let go of each other. "How—"

"We've got plenty of time for questions later," Kitty interrupted, "But we're in a real time crunch now. Though I'm _really_ glad to see you're okay—none of the S.H.I.E.L.D. members I talked to knew one way or the other."

"It's, uh… it's been a memorable morning, that's for sure," Moonstar sighed. "So, why did you need me?"

"We _all_ need you," emphasized Captain America, making his way up behind Kitty. "Her, you, and I are going in a team by ourselves to a small cove about a half-mile further down the coast. According to Colonel Fury, there's an old secret base entrance located there, back when this island was a S.H.I.E.L.D. prison facility during the Cold War. But it's locked up tight, and we're going to need Shadowcat's powers and yours as well in order to get inside and hopefully find a 'back door' into Magneto's base of operations."

"Wait a second," Toad laughed. "Why're we takin' orders from some idiot dressed up like Cap'n America?"

Instead of a response, everyone in the group just turned their heads towards Toad, their eyebrows raised.

"….Oh. Oh, no _way_."

* * *

"You won't… get away with—"

*KONK!*

A final blow to the head by Colossus managed to knock Omega Red unconscious, the latter's powers having been rendered useless by the arrival of S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers.

"…and you'll take good care of them?" Cyclops said, questioning the S.H.I.E.L.D. medical personnel who had gathered around Wolfsbane and Iceman's unconscious forms.

"Wolfsbane got a pretty hard knock to the head—we're going to have to see if there's any permanent damage," said the doctor giving her a cursory examination. "But other than that, there's simply burns, scrapes, and bruises. Nothing she won't be able to fully recover from within a few weeks. As for Iceman… well, as you said, he was subjected to very high temperatures by one of the Acolytes, and he has a weakness for things like that. But once he regains consciousness, he should be able to 'ice up' and feel relatively normal again. The problem is getting him to do so…"

"Hey bro, c'mon," Havok said, putting his hand on his older brother's shoulder. "The others are heading towards the center of the island—we gotta be with 'em."

"Yeah, it's just—alright," Cyclops said, interrupting himself as he reluctantly turned back and followed the rest of his small squad—Colossus, Havok, Mercury, and Magma—along with a nearly a dozen S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers towards the island's interior. "I suppose there's nothing more we can do here."

"Hey, don't worry about it," Havok replied as they walked away from the shoreline. "These S.H.I.E.L.D. guys, man, they really pulled it off—those new guns of theirs totally saved the day, and they've been friendly enough, so why wouldn't they give the best care possible to Rahne and Bobby?"

"You haven't had as much direct experience with them as I have, Alex," Cyclops replied. "Yeah, S.H.I.E.L.D. generally tend to be the good guys, but, well… let's just say their reasons for doing things aren't the same as ours, and their values tend to be… shifty. The ends usually justify the means with Colonel Fury. I generally think we can depend on them, but… I don't know. They weren't there when the country needed them during the whole H.Y.D.R.A. incident, and now suddenly they're back, with guns that can basically render any advantage we have void. We just… we need to keep an eye on them, that's all I'm saying."

"Not to mention things aren't quite adding up," Magma interjected as the Summers brothers caught up with her and the rest of the squad. "From the details we've been getting over the radio via the others, Kurt was apparently the one who downed the force field, but he says he was helped out by Cessily."

"Yeah, and I was never even _there_," Mercury said, a quizzical look on her face. "I didn't even know Kurt was still alive until those S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers told us."

"So someone was somehow impersonating Cessily in order to help Kurt sabotage the force field," Magma said. "We know it wasn't any of us, and though there are definitely plenty of Acolytes able to do so, there's no reason why they'd want to be instrumental in taking down their own. Unless…"

"…Unless Magneto's forces are not as united as we think they are," Colossus continued. "There is one Mutant I am surprised nobody has run into yet. Back when the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors were first looking over Rahne and Bobby, I radioed the other squads—but they have not run into him, either. And he is one of the most powerful Mutants on this island that we know of."

"Who are you talking about, Magneto?" Havok said. "It'd be just like him to wait behind an army of his own before trying to take us on directly."

"No, not Magneto," Colossus said, shaking his head. "I am talking about someone who could probably beat Magneto into a pulp if he had his powers under better control, and who is quite capable of using mental misdirection to create an illusion in the mind of Nightcrawler. I am talking about—"

* * *

_Legion._

David turned away from the window he had been looking out of and almost jumped at the sudden appearance of a blonde teenager in the middle of the room with him.

"Who…?" David asked, looking oddly at the female standing rather stiffly in the middle of his bedroom. "And what are you doing in my room?! MOM—"

_Your mother can't hear you, Legion_, the female said. Or—David _thought_ she said. The girl's mouth didn't move at all when she spoke, and yet he heard her words as plainly and as loudly as if she had. _Nobody can… except for us._

"…Us?" David asked, though no sooner had he asked the question than four more teenagers were standing in the room alongside the first—all of them identical to the first.

David took a step back, towards the window. This was really starting to creep him out. "That isn't poss- what _are_ you?!"

_We're slowly going to start rolling back the memory blocks, _the quintuplets "said" to David, seemingly ignoring his question. _Though the illusions will stay… for a moment. It's best to get you out of this state slowly._

"What—the _heck_—are you talking ab—"

And suddenly David remembered. He was a Mutant. He had found his father, Charles Xavier—only to be ripped away from him—from reality itself—by Lucas.

Only—he was Lucas, as well…

In the blink of an eye, the walls of David's "bedroom" turned transparent, and on one side—in a separate room—was Lucas, leaning against the invisible barrier between them.

"It's about sodding time," Lucas said from the "room" next to David's. "Out of your little fantasy world, David? Because it's about time you woke up. It's about time _all of us_ did."

"All of us?" David asked.

Again, no sooner had he asked the question than the transparent cells around him multiplied, suddenly filling themselves in with different people—some of whom he recognized.

Different people who were, in fact, all him—or, perhaps, some aspect of him.

There was Bart, the wide, muscular strongman… Ian, the mute child with the power to create psychic fire walls… Emerald, the girl with power over water…

And then there was….

Then there was…

David didn't recognize the others, but there were plenty of others. Perhaps twenty, now.

"Don't know who most of them are, Dave?" Lucas said patronizingly. "Well, let me fill you in a bit—being the 'original' one of us and all, I guess you deserve to know, since you're the one _responsible_ for it!"

David slowly sat down. He didn't know what Lucas was talking about, but—somehow—he also knew that it was true.

"Here's the scoop, David," Lucas continued. "We've—_you've_—been getting worse. At first, once I managed to trick dear old Daddy into isolating you and Ian from myself, I had the run of the place—'the place' being _your body_, in case you're having trouble keeping up.

"Anyways, after a while, I found out that I had to start sharing the joint with Bart and Emerald, there. And then, after we moved to Genosha, Ian showed up again, along with—briefly—yourself, though Mastermind managed to subdue that part of you and lock it away again.

"But that still didn't work, David," Lucas said, pressing his face against the invisible barrier between himself and the person he was addressing, his tone becoming increasingly unhinged. "New ones—new personalities—they kept surfacing. A day would go by, and another one would show up. Another week, and _two more_! Before you knew it, it was getting awfully _crowded_ in here.

"And so finally, it seemed like our _wonderful_ boss had had it!" Lucas continued, his face now positively red with rage. "He got tired of all the alter-egos you were cranking out, David, and—coincidentally—he had a problem. You see, he was gaining new recruits—_real_ new recruits, not just more of _us_—every day. And they needed power—power to sustain their growing civilization. Sure, they could just teleport in a few base materials, but not something as big and self-contained as an entire reactor, and they needed something fast. Something that they didn't have to build from scratch. Magneto TOLD the others that Blink had finally found a small experimental reactor in some top-secret government facility. He told them that he had sent Blink and a couple of his other top Acolytes—me included—along to help secure that _special, wonderful_ new power source. Only we supposedly were 'killed' in the process of retrieving it."

Lucas finally managed to regain some of his composure, and stood back a few steps before gesturing to David's left. Instinctively, David knew where to look—and on the left side of his cell, a couple of blocks down, was a stick-thin alter-ego of his with spiky hair, radiating electrical energy from every square inch of his body—including his eyes.

"Pl-please… h-help… m-me…" said the alter-ego pitifully, trembling, unable to move.

"Can you guess how this tale ends, David?" Lucas asked.

"N-no… no, this can't… this can't have happened…" David mumbled, tears welling up in his eyes. Turning to look at the somber-looking quintuplets still in the cell with him, he asked them, "Y-you… you five… you dug into my head… separated ALL of the other personalities from coming out—except that one? Because you needed the power?"

_And you've been in a reactor ever since- your power enough to sustain the entire island's electricity needs, _the Five-in-One thought back sadly.

_We wanted to keep this from you, David, we really did… but we need your help._

"Really?!" David said, finally finding his voice and standing straight up, nearly shouting as he continued, "And just WHY should I help such AMORAL, BACKSTABBING little… _little_…"

_Because if you help us, David_, the Five-in-One interrupted, _We can make all of this…this nightmare your powers have created… go away._

* * *

"This is it, according to Fury's schematics," Captain America said, looking up from the datapad he held.

Moonstar cocked her head, staring at the obstacle ahead of them. "But… it's just a rock cliff. It doesn't look any different from the rest of the coast on this end of the island."

Indeed, as the trio had said goodbye to the others and moved further down the shoreline, the sandy beach had gradually disappeared, becoming a rocky coastline on one corner of the island. Carefully, Moonstar, Shadowcat, and Captain America had navigated among the sharp, tight rock outcroppings, until they had come to this seemingly innocuous point on the cliffside, the ocean waves lapping against the rocks about twenty feet below them.

"I think that's the point," Shadowcat said. "Hold on while I check."

Phasing into the cliffside, a few seconds later Kitty came back out.

"Yeah, there's a corridor behind there," Shadowcat nodded. "Though from the smell of things, it's pretty dusty inside—hasn't been used in a while, which is good. C'mon, grab my hands."

Doing so, Kitty phased Moonstar and Captain America through the two feet or so of rock, into an open—but completely black—space.

Moonstar coughed. "Ugh, you weren't kidding. I think I'm going to try holding my breath again…"

A beam of light suddenly appeared in the corridor as Captain America took out and activated his flashlight, followed quickly afterwards by Shadowcat and Moonstar, who also had been given the same tools.

Coughing and waving a branch of cobwebs away from his face, Captain America took point and started to venture further down the corridor, the three of them moving their flashlights all around to make sure there wasn't anything they were missing.

"I wonder why Magneto and the others never saw fit to use the existing base?" Moonstar asked. "I mean, it was already here…"

"Look at the dimensions," Captain America said as he continued to walk down the cobweb-covered corridor. "This hallway… it's about a foot or so taller than I am. Big enough for almost any human, but some of the bigger Acolytes—like that Rockslide fellow that you mentioned nearly killed you—wouldn't be able to fit in here. Often building entirely new structures is less time-consuming than renovation."

"So, what are we looking for, exactly?" Shadowcat asked, pausing to cough up some dust that had gotten caught in her throat. "Shouldn't we have come across a room or something by now?"

"Considering it came all the way to the shoreline, I think this is an emergency escape tunnel of some sort," Captain America replied. "According the schematics, it sure looks like it. We have a way to go before we get to any rooms."

"And when we do, what then?" Moonstar questioned.

"Well, that's where your abilities come in," the Captain answered. "All S.H.I.E.L.D. bases, when they're decommissioned, still have one core computer system kept online- just in case. Supposedly there's enough power left in the computer's backups to keep it in its 'standby' mode for over a hundred years, so there's no way it should've gone dark already. We find that computer—which, if I remember the standard base layout correctly, we should have no problem finding—and then you can reactivate it using your powers, Moonstar. Perhaps we can use it to activate some old ordnance stored in this base somewhere… or, if it's been hooked up, we could even access Magneto's network, if we're lucky. Anything to give us a potential advantage as the others above converge on those buildings in the center of the island."

No sooner had the Captain finished his sentence then the corridor abruptly opened up into a medium-sized room with steel walls—most of the furniture had been cleared out, presumably by either S.H.I.E.L.D. or Magneto's Acolytes, so the room's former purpose wasn't entirely clear from a cursory scan with their flashlights.

"Hrrm," Captain America said, his flashlight focusing on a selection of large closed-off connection sockets behind a counter in one corner of the room. "According to the schematic, this used to be the mess hall, and that looks like a closed-down cooking area, which pretty much confirms it. That means this schematic is still relevant—that's certainly good. We should go left, here, towards the terminal room. C'mon, let's get going. Every second we waste is another second Magneto has to prepare."

Shadowcat and Moonstar both glanced uneasily at each other before following Captain America as he ran down the corridor leading away from the left side of the room.

* * *

"There," Captain America said several minutes later, pointing with his flashlight to a terminal housed on one wall in the room they had just entered. "That's the terminal we're looking for."

"Are you sure?" Moonstar asked, walking up to it. "It looks like it's offline."

"It's meant to," Captain America replied, "At least according to Fury. I haven't really… been around… since computers were invented, so I don't have much personal knowledge of how they work…"

"I got it, then," Moonstar said, her glowing eye flashing more brightly as she knelt down to the computer's interface, her powers at work.

A few seconds later, the lights came on, though a few kept flickering.

"Good," Shadowcat said, putting away her flashlight. "Now this place doesn't look QUITE so creepy."

The room was silent for the next few moments, as Moonstar used her powers to continue to hack into the base's old system and reactivate old nodes. Shadowcat and Captain America leaned against the wall. The near-complete silence was awkward enough that Shadowcat felt compelled to say something just to break the tension.

"So, uh… Captain America… how long have you been, y'know… awake?"

"You knew about my being in a deep freeze?" the Captain said, turning towards Shadowcat, an eyebrow raised. "Hrrm. Logan must've told you all more about my history than Fury assumed. Classic Logan, never quite playing by the rules…"

"Well, Mister Logan had actually told Kurt a few years back, and then a few weeks later Kurt had told me… as well as the rest of the X-Men," Shadowcat shrugged, sighing.

"Fury had told me Logan died a few months back, on this same island," Captain America said, his gaze lowering to the ground. "I'm… sorry. To think that I've actually outlived him… well, I never would've guessed it."

"Yeah… yeah, I really miss him," Shadowcat said, her voice wavering slightly before she cleared her throat and brought her emotions back under control.

"So do I…" Captain America said, before wiping his eyes and continuing. "So, anyways, to answer your question, I've only been 'awake' for about two days, now. Since then, well… it's been quite an info dump. I'm still getting used to this whole 'Mutant' thing. Well, that and… heh… all these computers."

"Really? Just two days?" Shadowcat asked, astonished. "Was that a coincidence, or…?"

"No, it wasn't," the Captain replied, his tone becoming a little perturbed. "That, after all these decades, I was raised back into consciousness only to deal with an international crisis isn't lost on me. After this is all over, Fury and I… we're going to have a few words."

"So how did they…?" Shadowcat began.

"They spliced my DNA with a bit of some taken from Logan… don't ask me how they got it," Captain America replied. "But regardless, once they integrated it with my bodily systems, Logan's healing factor stopped and reversed the cellular decay that had been a long-term side effect of my undergoing the Super Soldier process. I'm officially classified as a 'half-Mutant' now... whatever that's supposed to mean."

"I hope that doesn't mean you'll be affected by the radiation Magneto's been enveloping this island with," Shadowcat replied. Gesturing to Moonstar, she continued, "I know with this big of an area, it's slow-acting, but Moonstar's hair is already speckled through with gray—a sign that it's affecting her—and she's only been here for a few hours."

"I don't want to alarm you, but I'm starting to see a few white hairs around _your_ temples, as well," Captain America said. "The sooner we get this whole operation shut down, the better."

"Well at least it's making this whole 'hacking' thing a little bit easier," Moonstar replied, still making her way through the computer's systems. "I'm farther than I thought I'd be. I've almost got the whole system rebooted at this point… Anyways, I don't know if the brainwashing aspect of this radiation is working. If it worked like Professor X said it did, than I should slowly become less emotional… but if anything, I'm MORE angry at Magneto than ever."

"Oh, that's right, you weren't around when I briefed the others over the comlinks on the info Kurt picked up," Shadowcat said. "From what he told us, before the Cyttorak gems were even, like, powered up, Mystique—posing as various other Acolytes, of course—managed to gain access to the radiation controls and tweak them slightly. Like Magneto, she wanted more powerful Mutants, so she kept that part of the programming intact—however, she altered the wavelengths to inflame emotions, not suppress them, so that the Acolytes would be MORE likely to rebel."

"And no one caught on?" Moonstar asked.

"Hey, this is the same woman who switched Juggernaut with Xavier in the Stone Penitentiary, remember?" Kitty responded. "I'm sure she masked her intrusion somehow—according to Kurt, it didn't take a radical change in the radiation wavelength."

"Wait a minute…" Moonstar said, looking like she was about to respond to Kitty's statement but was interrupted by whatever part of the system she was hacking into. "Ah-HA! There is a link into the mainframe from here…"

"Where?" Shadowcat asked.

"The west wing, room…. 2F. It's a direct connection—Magneto must have been rummaging through old S.H.I.E.L.D. info for something. Or at least, one of his subordinates was."

"2F… according to the schematics, that's not far from here," Captain America said. "If it's a direct connection, there could be a way into Magneto's base proper in that room. Good job, Moonstar—let's get going."

"Wait, hold on a sec!" Moonstar said. "I'm now in HIS computer system… I can't believe he'd… woah. Okay, guys? I think we have a target."

"What? What is it?" Shadowcat asked as Moonstar stood up, apparently disengaging from her cyber-link as her glowing eye dimmed back down to its normal brightness.

"Captain America, unfortunately you're wrong. There's nothing larger than a cable leading into Magneto's base from 2F... but I've got something better. The power center for this whole island is located in a sub-floor of the main base, below everything else—it's even located below the level WE'RE on. I also know where they're probably keeping their prisoners, but… if we knock out this power center, everything on the island will shut down within minutes—including the towers spewing radiation. But… I'm not sure if you actually WANT to destroy this power source…"

"What? Why not?" Captain America questioned.

"Because it's not a typical reactor, it's—well, it's got a Mutant in it—he's being held there, against his will. It's… it's Legion."

"_Legion?_!" Shadowcat asked in disbelief. "How is that even _possible_? His powers can't—"

Kitty's inquiry was drowned out as a huge, muffled explosion sounded from far above, and the world around them collapsed.

* * *

_Something's not right._

Magneto looked around the hallway where he and a small group of Acolytes were stationed, awaiting further updates from the Five-in-One.

But it had been at least ten minutes since the last update. Far too long. Oh, he had been contacted further by them, the reports confirming that—as expected, unfortunately—the other groups had either fallen or retreated back to the main tower and its surrounding buildings, as those accursed S.H.I.E.L.D. troops essentially negated their gifts. But that had been it.

_Five-in-One?_ Magneto asked, cautiously taking off his helmet.

No response.

_FIVE-IN-ONE?!_

Still nothing.

Magneto cursed and turned around to his subordinates. "Have any of you heard ANYTHING from Five-in-One?"

All of the Acolytes present shook their heads.

"I'm going back down to the Hub," Magneto said, "Try to find out what the blazes is keeping them from updating us. If you hear anything amiss, you shoot to kill, understand?!"

All of the Acolytes nodded—save two.

"Skin? DJ? Do either of you two have a _problem_ with my orders?" Magneto snarled, walking up to the two of them. "Skin" was using the extra skin drooping from his arms to keep a nearly-unconscious Pyro in a standing position, while "DJ" had a gun pointed at the prisoner's head.

"A little bit, yeah," DJ said, removing his shades and turning the walkman he always carried around with him to a different track, his eyes turning an icy blue as he did so. "We're getting' a bit tired a' you being so… what's the word, Skin?"

"Flippant," Skin spat out.

Magneto was honestly surprised. When they had been brought here, Skin and DJ had both been ideal Acolytes—always following orders, never questioning what they were told… at least vocally, anyways.

_So why this sudden rebellious streak? Why now? If anything, they should be even _more _obedient than they've been because of the radiation…_

Magneto put back on his helmet, never taking his eyes off the two. "So. It's mutiny, is it? Why _now_?"

"Because you've been pushin' us all around for too long now," DJ began, the icy glow of his eyes glowing brighter as he continued, "And we're not gonna—"

A sudden loud crack sounded from one side of the wall as a jagged shard of metal was torn off of it, followed a fraction of a second later by two wet, dull thuds as both DJ and Skin fell suddenly to the ground, blood flowing from the new gaping wounds in their heads onto the cold metal floor.

Magneto could tell the other Acolytes present were taken aback—just as he wanted.

"Let that be a lesson to you all," Magneto said, dropping the shard of metal that hovered in the air behind the two bodies to the floor. "If you think you can disobey my orders, NOW of all times… you are _wrong_."

"Y-yes, Magneto," stammered the other Acolytes still standing.

"Now, Primal—grab a hold of Pyro, and crush his head like a melon if he moves," Magneto ordered, gesturing to the Brotherhood member who had been dumped on the ground, just barely stirring. "M, you will take sole responsibility of making sure Rogue stays in line—do you both understand?"

Both nodded wordlessly.

As soon as the Acolyte named Primal had put an arm around Pyro's neck and hoisted him up into the air by it, Magneto turned around and walked quickly in the direction of the elevator that would take him down the Hub.

He was just about to enter said elevator when a huge explosion sounded from behind him.

* * *

It was an unusual scene, down in the Hub.

None of the Five-in-One were at their stations, connected to the Cerebro Mark II. They had abandoned their headsets, and currently stood around the reactor in the center of the room—a reactor that housed—in one of his many personas—Legion.

"Can you see us, David?" the Five all asked.

"I…. I… I think I can," Legion said in David's voice, though visually he still looked like the stick-thin electricity-spewing alter-ego seen inside Legion's mindscape. "How… how is this possible?"

"We're giving you direct control over the sight of one of your personas—namely, the one that's in control right now," the Five replied.

"You… you can do that?"

"We're psychic Mutants with a partially shared hive mind, David. Individually, we're not particularly powerful, but together—as we all are now—we're the most powerful telepaths in the world. Because of recent events, we've come to the conclusion that we're… even more powerful than your father. Nearly anything that is possible with the mind, we can do."

"Then how c-come you don't… just… _erase_ the others?!"

"Two reasons. First, your psyche has been fractured for too long, with different portions of your brain—your other selves, if you will—developing in different ways, at different rates. If we were to wipe them all out, a large portion of your brain would shut down. You would be, effectively, a vegetable. Second, your current 'active' persona is able to withstand extremely high temperatures and pressures in that reactor—that's the only reason you're alive. If you were to fully switch to any of your other personas—which, under Magneto's command, we mentally locked this persona from being able to do—you would die almost instantaneously, before the reactor had a chance to cool down and de-pressurize."

Legion stood there in the reactor for a moment, a heartbroken, hopeless look on his face slowly forming. "S-so, then… if that's the case… why did you free me? What do you want me to do?"

"We now see that Magneto's use of you as only an energy source was misguided, David. We don't—no one deserves to live like this. We see that now. And so we want to set you free."

"You want… you want me to change to a different personality on purpose? To…to _kill_ myself?" David asked.

"…Yes, David. We understand it is not an easy decision to make, but compared to…this… we think it would be a release."

"Wait… hold on… WHY now?" Legion asked. "If I'm going to do this, I want to know… What made you change your mind on this?"

_He's asking too many questions, _one of the Five_—_Celeste- said telepathically to her sisters. _I told you it would come to this._

_ And so? _thought back Mindee. _Why shouldn't he know? It's not like he'll be alive long enough to do anything about it._

_ But he still made us promise not to tell anyone else, outside of the two who already know, _Phoebe replied. _If he finds out that we told anyone else—even Legion—which he very easily could…_

_ Phoebe is right, _Sophie said. _We can't take that chance. Not for something like this._

_ It's agreed, then? _thought the last sister, Esme. _We do this—we make him change—and then we leave. No looking back._

Legion—or David, rather—was growing anxious at the sudden apparent silence among the Five. "…What's wrong? Why won't you _tell me?!"_

"We're sorry," the Five replied. "We truly are. We wanted you to go to your death believing that you were dying for a better cause—to deal a blow to your father's enemy, Magneto. But now, because you had to keep asking questions… now we simply must tell you. You are something in the way—something that will prevent us from achieving a better future. He said you must be eliminated… you are too unpredictable. Your presence would jeopardize the future of the Mutant race itself."

"No…." Legion said sadly. "You can't! I have to tell my f-"

But they did. Immediately Legion changed form into David, who let out a shrieking, horrifying scream of agony as the intense heat and pressure cooked him inside the reactor in less than a second.

A charred, flaming skeletal corpse slumped to the bottom of the reactor core.

"We've got less than a minute before the reactor output isn't able to sustain power throughout the building," Mindee said urgently. "We need to get back on Cerebro and call her—she said she would be ready, whether she had taken care of the intruder or not."

Esme looked about ready to respond, but was interrupted by the sound of a large explosion far above them.

* * *

Boom Boom pinched her sinuses.

She had been instrumental in getting one of the radiation towers operational, and thus had been occupied during the X-Men's surprise attack on Genosha. She had been ordered to go back to the main tower in the center of the island as the assault had begun, and then had been one of the many sent out to look for the mysterious Mutant signature that had popped up inside the force field afterwards.

Like all of the others, she had returned empty-handed—but unlike most of the others, she had stayed out considerably longer. She had been hoping, praying that the lone X-Man on the island had been Magma, just so she could have the reward of killing the traitor herself.

It had only been after several hours that she had reluctantly turned back towards the base—only to see as she got back Acolytes going spreading outwards in every direction from the tower. Apparently that lone X-Man—or _someone_ else—had managed to get the force field down, and now there were four invading parties coming in from all cardinal directions.

She had followed one of the groups, from the rear given how tired she had been from already going to-and-fro all over the island—only to discover that, of _course_, the group they had engaged hadn't included Amara.

Still, she had been able to take comfort in the fact that given how vastly they outnumbered the X-Men, it wouldn't have been long until they were all dead…

…_Until those cheating S.H.I.E.L.D. flunkies had shown up. With their cheater weapons. And ruined EVERYTHING_.

It hadn't taken her long to see where things were going, and so she had retreated to the center of the island, where the main tower and a couple of locked-down blocks of newly-erected housing for the various Acolytes were located.

Despite how tired Tabitha was, she had booked it to the center, because she knew that everyone would be coming here soon enough. So she had laid an ambush for them, creating several of her energy spheres—some of the biggest she had ever created, thanks to the increasing effects of the island's radiation on her—and hidden them in the various nooks and crannies among the Acolytes' housing around the tower, planning to trigger them as soon as the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers and X-Men entered the area, essentially opening up a huge sinkhole underneath them all. Like most of the other Acolytes, she knew about the fairly extensive network of underground tunnels spreading out from beneath the main tower and thus under the Acolytes' housing, as well. Charges as big as the ones she had laid were bound to send the very ground crumbling out from underneath all of them. She had tried to get the attention of any of the Five, to let the other Acolytes know—only to find that, for some reason, they were no longer responding.

Still, she reasoned, this was their last chance. Magneto and a few others were still hiding in the main tower, but it wouldn't be long. The depowered Acolytes were retreating at a full pace back towards the main tower— that is, the ones who were still alive. A few of them, like poor Chamber, had died as soon as they were depowered, their Mutant powers having been the only thing keeping them alive. Some of the Acolyte fliers had also had the unfortunate predicament of being high up in the air when they were hit with the depowering beams.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers were chasing the depowered Acolytes, shooting a pink beam from their "cheater" guns every now and then to keep the retreating Acolytes depowered. They were followed in the rear by the X-Men and Brotherhood members, who were slowly but surely catching up with the retreating members of her side.

Tabitha knew that no matter what choice she made, some of the Acolytes were going to die as a result of her actions here. She hadn't expected the incoming enemies to be so organized—the S.H.I.E.L.D. troops were all at the front of the charge, the X-Men and Brotherhood taking up the rear. She had been hoping to take all of them out at once—but if she waited much longer, the S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers would be too near to the center tower, and would likely be spared from the blasts of the energy spheres she had laid down earlier. And, as much as she hated to admit it, they were the real threat here.

Boom Boom finally stopping pinched her sinuses and cursed. Fraggit, she was getting tired of waiting. It was the Acolyte's own faults if they couldn't get out of the way of what she had laid down.

So, from her position hidden amongst a couple of trees on a rock outcropping overlooking the whole fledgling Acolyte "city" about a half-mile outside the "zone of destruction", she snapped her fingers.

And immediately several ear-splitting booms sounded from all around the city—incinerating many of the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers immediately, as well as at least a dozen Acolytes.

Tabitha shielded her eyes, and when she deemed it safe to look towards the center of the island again she could already hear the rumbling—holes in the ground started to appear under the epicenters of the explosions and then rapidly spread outwards, pulling down almost all of the armed S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers. The huge expanding sinkholes began to merge, forming a thick ring around the central tower—and before they could do much about it, some of the groundbound X-Men and Brotherhood members fell into the edges of the utterly massive circular sinkhole, although as the massive cave-in slowly came to a stop, Boom Boom was intensely disappointed to see many of them had managed to back up in time to avoid sliding into the massive hole of dirt, debris, and dust with their comrades.

Still, on the other hand, she was elated to see that a certain familiar flaming female was among those who tumbled into the massive hole.

_Time to finish this, _Boom Boom thought, beginning to climb down the rock outcropping and make her way quickly towards the sinkhole, dirt and dust beginning to rise in a thick cloud from the ring around the central tower which, from the sounds of things, had finally stopped expanding, now roughly three hundred feet wide from the outer to the inner edges. A few moments later, when she felt she was out in the open enough where some of the others might have been able to see her despite the dust, she slouched onto the ground, the tall grass hiding her form as she continued to crawl her way forward.

* * *

As soon as the people holding her captive looked up at the ceiling in confusion at the sound of a massive explosion, Rogue—not quite as out of it as she had played—immediately took advantage of the opportunity.

Using M's stern hold of her arms as a pivot point, Rogue swept her legs underneath M's, attempting to get the strong—but average-sized—Mutant to fall down to the floor.

In an attempt to keep herself from tripping over Rogue's feet, M reflexively grabbed hold of Rogue's arms—only for, in the moment they were out of M's grasp, Rogue to move her hands just enough where M grabbed her power-sapping manacles. Because of her superhuman strength, M broke the manacles as she fell down—and Rogue couldn't help but smile as she reached down and grabbed a hold of M, sending the Acolyte into a coma and granting Rogue her powers.

"What th-?!" yelled an Acolyte that was holding onto Jean. "Primal, get—"

He was interrupted as the ceiling above them suddenly led out an incredibly loud crack, giving way to the explosion's initial, massive shockwave. Rogue barely heard one of the Acolytes cry for everyone to retreat, right before the ceiling collapsed on top of her.

* * *

"Something's happening way up there," Celeste said as the entire Hub room began to shake from the shockwaves of the explosion.

"Then it's time for us to get out of here," Phoebe replied, running over to one of the Cerebro Mark II interfaces and putting on the helmet. "Now, before the power runs out and this is unable to function…"

As Phoebe closed her eyes and concentrated, the other four turned their attention to the ceiling, which was shaking wildly, despite the explosion apparently being so far up. The reinforced structure of the room was the only thing keeping the room intact at all, that much they were certain of.

A few seconds passed, and Blink suddenly appeared in the room, falling onto her back as the last shockwaves made their way through the room.

"Blink!" Esme called out in concern, she and Celeste running over to help up their purple-skinned friend.

"What happened?!" Celeste asked.

"Nothing…. It's nothing," Blink said, wiping the blood from underneath her eyes and ignoring the large welt on her forehead. "One of the X-Men got the better of me… would've been for good, given that S.H.I.E.L.D. thugs showed up soon afterwards with some power-sapping blasters. They didn't work on me, though, and I think I know—"

"Save the explanations for later," the Five said as one, Phoebe disconnecting from the Cerebro Mark II as the lights began to flicker. "If we stay here much longer, someone—whether, it's the X-Men, S.H.I.E.L.D., or Magneto—will be out for blood. We need to leave before they can piece together anything."

As all of the Five-in-One put a hand on one of Blink's arms, she sighed and said, "Alright, then…. we're taking a quick stop to catch Rockslide, and then we're out of here. Hope you all don't mind cold weather."

And in another blink of purplish pink light, they were gone.

* * *

Avalanche slowly got up from his position on the ground near the edge of the massive ring-shaped sinkhole, rubbing his head.

The rumbling and cracking noises had finally faded—now all that lay before him for several hundred yards was a pit, a menagerie of bits of metal and rock making up the bottom a couple dozen feet down—though no doubt there were tons of people buried under that.

"That… was definitely not me," Avalanche said weakly as the Mutants positioned next to him—Quicksilver, about a dozen Multiples, and Beast-got to their feet.

"I thought I heard… an explosion," one of the Multiples said, confused.

"There were several of them," Angel said, landing down next to the group gingerly, his injured wing still giving him a bit of trouble. "All around the central tower—as you can see. This was clearly planned."

"It was a _stupid_ plan," Quicksilver replied, "They just destroyed most of their own structures!"

"And that's not all," Beast said, pointing towards the sky, where the red radiation envelope over the island was rapidly retreating back towards the towers all around the landmass' perimeter.

"Looks like it cut off the power, too," another of the Multiple duplicates said.

"No more radiation problems, then," Angel said, lifting off into the air, "Though we've got plenty of people to dig out!"

"He's right," Beast said, making a careful surveillance of everyone perched on the ground around the edge of the sinkhole. "Those explosions… the resulting collapse, here... nearly all of the S.H.I.E.L.D. troops have been buried under that. I'm only counting five that I can see."

*Is… is everyone alright?* came Maverick's voice over the comlink. *What was that loud noise?! Charles seems to be mentally shaken by something, as well…*

"We're most definitely NOT alright," Beast said. "Most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. troops are buried in rubble, along with some of the X-Men and Brotherhood, to boot. The Acolytes took out some of their own with those blasts, too, but… most of them made it out of the blast radius, and they're crowded around the central tower. I estimate about ten minutes before they start getting their powers back and charging at us again. We're going to need every one of those guns we can afford, Maverick—you and Charles better get here quickly."

*On our way,* Maverick said, the comlink cutting off.

"Hey, look!" one of the Jamies said excitedly, pointing towards the rubble in front of them. "At least SOME of them are okay…"

Below, Hisako—her psychic pink armor surrounding her—was emerging from beneath the avalanche of debris, a grateful S.H.I.E.L.D. agent making his way out from under her. Further away, the group could see a group of boulders melting away as Magma, the Scarlet Witch, and a few other agents came up through them, while a sudden laser burst from the other side followed as Cyclops helped his brother out of that edge of the sinkhole.

"So… what do we do, Mr. McCoy?" one of the Multiples asked. "Do we… do we start digging, seeing if we can help the others out, or should we go after the other Acolytes before they get re-powered?"

Beast glanced at the Acolytes staring back at them from the other side of the ring of debris—all of them were simply looking back at X-Men around them, directionless, leaderless.

Sighing, Hank said, "It'll be at least several minutes before their powers start to come back, and those minutes could mean the difference between life and death for those trapped under all this. Let's focus on our recovery efforts, first. If they attack us again… we'll deal with that when it happens."

"What?! We've gotta take them out while we still have a chance!" Quicksilver said. "If we let my father get away, he'll—"

Quicksilver was interrupted as a huge pile of rocks and debris in the middle of the sinkhole ahead of them suddenly lifted into the air, and out of the middle of them rose—with a roar filled with equal parts rage and frustration—Magneto.

* * *

Shadowcat was grateful when she—along with Moonstar and Captain America—finally broke above the piles of debris. She had instinctively phased herself, along with her teammates, just as the whole tunnel they were in had collapsed—and had then phased them through the rock upwards, hoping she and Captain Rogers could hold their breath long enough to make it to the ground level.

They had—but barely. They had obviously been very deep underground—it had taken nearly a minute to get the three of them up to the surface, and with such a sudden collapse and only dusty air to suck in, they hadn't had the best supply in their lungs to begin the journey. As soon as they reached the surface Kitty instantly de-phased them all, as she and Captain America fell to the ground, gasping.

Moonstar, not needing air anymore, took the chance to look up—only to scream a warning at Captain America a second before a huge boulder fell on him from the sky, hard.

The scene was chaos—again. Magneto stood at the center of a huge tornado of rock and metal debris, hurling it every which way at every X-Man, Brotherhood member, or S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in his sight. From what little Moonstar could see of the Acolyte leader, there was no grand speech he was yelling, no taunts—just pure, unadulterated rage at his master plan lying in ruins around him.

"Captain…. Captain America!" Shadowcat gasped, crawling over to the superhero crushed underneath the boulder.

"I'm…. I'll be… okay…" Captain Rogers gritted, blood dribbling from his mouth. "I can feel Logan's healing factor… starting to kick in. I can get this thing off me… myself, I just need… some time. Get…. Magneto."

"You heard him," Moonstar said, helping Shadowcat up and wincing as another boulder was launched haphazardly towards them, Shadowcat phasing them both through the rock as it crashed on to the ground behind him.

"But what can WE do?!" Shadowcat yelled.

Moonstar looked at the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents' bodies around them. Many were mostly crushed underneath the rocks, but a few muffled cries for help could be heard, a few limbs seen twitching between cracks in the layer of debris.

"We can help those who helped us."

* * *

"Wanda, hex him already!" Quicksilver yelled, zooming up beside his sister as the other X-Men attempted to avoid or blast back at the rain of rock and metal being shoved in their direction. Several of the Multiple duplicates and remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. agents—along with Storm, Angel, Avalanche, and Colossus—had already been bludgeoned to the ground with debris, though Pietro was certain at least the latter would be completely fine.

"I can't get a fix on him!" the Scarlet Witch yelled back, her hands ready, but unable to find a clear line-of-sight through the whirlwind of rock that lasted for more than a split-second.

"Then we need to CLEAR a path," Quicksilver said, eyeing the duo of Havok and Cyclops blasting away angrily at the debris launched in their team's direction. "And we need to concentrate on one area…. Hold on a sec, sis."

"What-?" Wanda began, but before she could finish her sentence she felt her brother pick her up and her vision become a flash as she was carried at high-speed, the rush of wind against her hair abruptly starting and then stopping in a mere second as she and her brother were finally—suddenly—right next to Havok and Cyclops.

"Quicksilver, what do you need?" Cyclops yelled, his eyebeams blasting out in an almost continuous stream as he deflected or destroyed the debris aimed at him and his team. "We're a bit busy here!"

"We need a path carved," Pietro replied, settling Wanda down. "Just for a minute, at least. To get Wanda in close enough to hex Magneto's powers."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea, with all these rocks in the air," Havok said. "If they all collapse at the same time—"

"You got a better idea?!" Quicksilver yelled back.

A few moments of (relative) silence followed, before Cyclops nodded. "Alright, then get the other conscious blasters here, Pietro, and quickly, before Magneto knows what's going on."

It didn't take more than ten seconds before Surge was there, along with Magma, who had returned to her normal form long enough to be carried.

"Alright, everyone," Cyclops said, nodding quickly to the newcomers. "Everyone that can, fire straightforward and keep running that direction. Fire at any incoming projectiles from either direction, you got it? Make way for Quicksilver, who will take the Scarlet Witch in close enough to hex Magneto's powers away for the moment. Then it'll be a pretty simple matter to take him out."

"Yeah….simple," Surge muttered as Pietro picked up his sister again.

"NOW!" Cyclops yelled, and nearly as one bolts of red energy, fire, and electricity all converged in one path straight down the middle of Magneto's hectic "metal twister", melting or deflecting away the largest pieces of debris, allowing Quicksilver to speedily deliver his sister near the epicenter—and before Magneto could quickly realize what was happening, a hex field surrounded him.

"NOOO!" Magneto yelled as he abruptly began to fall from his position about a hundred feet above the bottom of the sinkhole.

It seemed like Magneto might die from the sheer height of his fall until the huge volume of boulders and debris he had been lifting also all collapsed to the ground as one. Quicksilver did his best to side-step the boulders as they crashed back into the sinkhole, but during his quick dash back-and-forth a medium-sized rock gave Wanda a glancing blow in the side of her head—not enough to knock her out, but enough to cause her to grunt in pain, her hex field temporarily dissipating.

Magneto managed to lift himself back into the air just moments before he was going to collide with the ground.

"It'll take more than a few of you to get rid of—UNH!" Magneto said, grunting as a pink laser impacted him from the side.

"You're right," Maverick yelled, sliding down into the fight from the edge of the sinkhole, the S.H.I.E.L.D. gun he had been given still smoking slightly from the discharge. "So let's turn that nebulous 'few' into 'several', shall we?"

Magneto stood up from his position on the ground, trying in vain to raise any of the debris around him with his powers, and yelling in rage when he realized what had just happened.

The yell was interrupted as Quicksilver flew by him, punching his father full-on in the face and knocking off his helmet before he was able to react.

"PIETRO!" Magneto roared, spitting out a bloody tooth and futilely swatting at his son as he zipped back to a position a couple of dozen feet back, where Wanda was sitting on the ground, rubbing her head. "I freed you from PRISON, boy! You would have still been ROTTING AWAY in a CELL if it wasn't for me! I gave you chance after chance… and THIS is how you REPAY ME?!"

"Funny," Quicksilver said with a sneer, as Maverick, Cyclops, Havok, Magma, and Surge ran up behind him. "You change the accusations, but keep the same sentence at the end… and that's exactly what I would've said to YOU after you left me to Mystique's own devices."

"I'm helping to ADVANCE our kind!" Magneto yelled. "Can't you idiots SEE that? See beyond your own little worlds, and look at the big PICTURE?!"

"_You're_ the one who doesn't seem to get the big picture here," Havok said, firing a blast from his hand and sending the Acolyte leader to the ground. "I mean, I don't exactly consider myself the sharpest knife in the drawer, but c'mon, dude. Look at all the people you've screwed over. I fell for it the first time—like all of the 'Acolytes' you've collected here—which is kind of a creepy term for your team, by the way..."

"…But he learned better," Cyclops continued, firing off a visor blast that pushed Magneto back to the ground just as he was trying to get up again. "We all did. It may have taken some of us longer than the others, but we've all figured out what you haven't been able to admit to yourself—that all anyone _ever_ is is a pawn to you."

"Or just something in your way," Wanda replied as she slowly stood up, sending another hex bolt towards Magneto, who let out a groan of agony as the field enveloped him.

"W-Wanda," Magneto moaned, spreading one of his hands out towards his daughter in a gesture of supplication, "Y-you couldn't control—"

"NO," Wanda snapped back, the hex field around Magneto growing in strength as she said so, her father beginning to writhe in pain. "You won't talk your way out of this one. Not anymore! You locked me up—and then made others MESS WITH MY MIND just to try to cover it up!"

"You left me on my own when I was barely a teenager!" Quicksilver said, zipping past his father and landing several more blows on him. "You managed to turn me against my sister, and then left me behind because I had the GALL to get captured helping out YOUR project!"

As Quicksilver sped back to stand besides Wanda, Havok blasted Magneto with his handbeams, not letting up as he stated angrily, "You turned me against the X-Men before I KNEW any better! You took advantage of me at one of the most NERVE-WRACKING times of my life, and then BRAINWASHED me when I stood WITH you!"

"You attacked the United States!" Magma said, adding her plume of flames to the damage being piled onto the Acolyte leader. "You've KILLED countless innocent people and threatened the entire WORLD!"

"And one of those countless people?" Surge yelled, firing electricity out of her gauntlets at Magneto. "The person who SAVED me from an isolated life inside a cell, and gave me the means to control my powers! And after she had SERVED you loyally for years!"

"You've captured and hurt my friends more times than I can remember!" Cyclops joined in, firing his eye blasts at Magnus. "And I don't know what you've DONE with Kurt, Rogue, and Jean—my FIANCE—but even if they're still alive, you deserve ALL of this, and worse!"

Magneto let out a blood-curdling scream of pain, unable to hold it in any longer—but the five Mutants kept it up. And then, abruptly, the scream died out, and Magneto stopped moving.

Slowly, one by one, the five Mutants let up, watching the battered, charred form of the Acolyte leader lie there on the ground—their expressions a mixture of uncertainty and disbelief. After all this time, after all these battles…

"…Is he finally dead?" Havok asked.

"I'll check his breathing," Magma said, stepping forward carefully, making her way around the collapsed debris everywhere.

She was almost to Magneto when a warning was shouted out by Wanda behind her.

Magma looked up, only to have an energy ball hit her in the back, exploding and causing her to be blown about a dozen feet forwards, a bloody and singed wound showing up through the back of her uniform as her flame form fizzled out and she fell to the ground, unconscious.

"KILL 'EM ALL!" Boom Boom seethed, running towards them from behind, more energy balls forming in her hands as she ran forward. "We can't let them—"

Tabitha was interrupted as Surge swept forward, clocking the Acolyte upside the jaw with her metal gauntlet.

"Not THIS time," Surge said, curling her other hand into a fist as she stood over Boom Boom, who had fallen to her knees, blood beginning to drip out of her mouth, the couple of small "booms" she had formed exploding like firecrackers on the ground.

"ACOLYTES!" Tabitha breathed angrily, addressing the stunned crowd about a hundred yards away, standing near the edge of the small circle of undamaged ground surrounding the main tower. Holding her hand up to her jaw, she continued, "WE CAN STILL—"

Tabitha was interrupted by another punch in the back of her head by Surge, knocking her on her back.

"Stay DOWN," Surge muttered, her gauntlets sparking, "Or those will be the last words you ever speak."

Boom Boom glared daggers at Surge, but finally kept quiet.

Mutters began to circulate among the group of remaining Acolytes, and a few moments later a fairly short, black teenager with a cracked orange visor slowly walked forward out of the group. His shoulders were slumped, and his face looked utterly dejected as he began to scale down the side of the sinkhole towards them.

"WHY are you doing this?!" Prodigy yelled, though his tone wasn't full of rage so much as it was full of hurt, disappointment, and confusion.

"I could ask you the same question!" Cyclops yelled, starting forward, his hand carefully on his visor as Quicksilver ran forward and began to check Magneto's body for any signs of life. On the horizon, everyone present could see the remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. helijets coming towards the sinkhole ruins from every direction, the threat of Magneto apparently over. Addressing the crowd of Acolytes, he continued, "Why did you do this?! Why did you follow this—this _megalomaniac_—and bomb structures throughout the U.S., killing hundreds?"

"Because THIS WAS OUR CHANCE AT UTOPIA!" Prodigy screamed back, tears starting to roll down his cheeks as he saw Quicksilver stand up smirking over Magneto's corpse and kick it, apparently satisfied that his father was dead. "Not just for us—but for you—for ALL OF YOU! We did it for EVERY MUTANT OUT THERE!"

"We didn't ASK you to," Cyclops replied back as Prodigy finished scaling down into the sinkhole. Cyclops slowed his walk towards the Acolyte now, only about a dozen meters separating them.

"And what DID you ask us to do?!" Prodigy continued, gesturing wildly with his hands now that they were free. "You asked us to… TO SUBMIT to humans! Our inferiors—people… people like THEM!"

Cyclops didn't have to look behind him to know that Prodigy was pointing at the incoming S.H.I.E.L.D. helijets.

"Really? Your 'inferiors', huh? Funny, they didn't just _bomb_ dozens of buildings full of innocents. They might not be perfect, but they're people, all the same. Just like YOU. Just like US. Just because they don't have special powers doesn't make them—"

"That's EXACTLY what it makes them!" Prodigy screamed back. "'Special' powers means exactly that! Why should we submit our gifts to THEM!?"

"That's the mistake you're making, drawing lines in the sand here!" Cyclops replied. "Or rather, Magneto was drawing lines in the sand. And you followed him along, with promises of a 'utopia'. And look at you—look at ALL of you—what are your ages, huh? I don't think I see _anyone_ here over thirty!"

Prodigy just stared at Cyclops for a moment, bewildered, before responding. "SO?! What the heck is that supposed to mean?!"

Cyclops stared at Prodigy for a second before lowering his voice. "From Nightcrawler's description… you're Prodigy, right? You pick up knowledge from other people's heads?"

Prodigy nodded slowly.

"Then YOU, of all people, should know the FIRST people who always fall for the propaganda of dictators and the promises of utopia. Who make up the masses of their little pet armies, because they aren't familiar enough yet with the world and eager to find their own place in it, and will listen to anybody—_anybody_—who will give them a real _purpose_ in life."

"…Teenagers and young adults…" Prodigy said, his eyes darting around as he came to a realization.

"Say it louder."

"YES! YES, IT'S PEOPLE OUR AGE!" Prodigy exploded. "But SO WHAT? That doesn't prove ANYTHING—like you know, the Mutant population is exponentially GROWING, and- and who are YOU to talk down to us? YOU'RE THE SAME AGE! Nearly all of the X-Men are!"

"But we weren't turned to Professor X's side by promises of utopia!" Cyclops shot back. "Almost all of us—we didn't WANT this. He told us that the road to a better life would be long, and it would be hard and it would be thankless, and we would need to understand not only ourselves, but other people's points of view, too! And even when they hated us, we would still HELP them, not only because we wanted to show we weren't monsters, but because it was THE RIGHT THING TO DO! And there was—there IS—no magical, strife-free future ahead of us in this world! Don't you get it?! History NEVER ends that way! Things might get better… for a while, but it _never_ lasts, because of people like Magneto! And anyone who has EVER fought, not just for a better world, but a step further- for some nonexistent 'utopia' where everyone gets along and has everything they want, where nobody ever hates and persecutes anyone else… that has ALWAYS ended in a bloodbath, with the exact opposite result of that intended! Just like it did THIS time!"

"Because of Magneto?! Because of YOU!" Prodigy seethed. "If you hadn't come here and RUINED everything! I've known Magneto for months now, and he wasn't—"

"He DID, Prodigy! He used you—ALL of you!" Cyclops replied, turning his head up to address the crowd of Acolytes. "That's all anybody EVER is to people like Magneto—pawns, statistics, a MEANS to an END! And all it eventually means is that someone eventually gets tired of it, and turns into ANOTHER Magneto with their OWN ends—and the cycle just continues!"

"What on earth are you talking about?!" Prodigy asked.

"As much as I'd like to take credit, we _didn't_ do this all by ourselves! Nightcrawler was led on by someone pretending to be one of us, leading to his disabling of the force field surrounding this island—and we weren't behind whatever created this sinkhole, either!"

"You-you're LYING!" Prodigy yelled. "This is all just some—"

_No. It isn't. I almost wish it was._

Everyone turned their head towards Professor X, who was coming up behind Cyclops, along with Maverick. Further behind them, the various S.H.I.E.L.D. helijets were carefully landing on the outside edge of the sinkhole, as emergency medical specialists, a few remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers, and Nick Fury jumped out of the vehicles.

_Yes, I'm speaking to all of you telepathically, _thought Professor X, his voice sounding off in the brains of everyone around him. _It's… much easier on the voice than yelling from this distance._

"Then what do you _want_?" Prodigy asked, his voice getting louder as he tried to be heard by everyone over the sound of the helijets landing. "We're not—I'M not—joining your little _club_!"

_This isn't about that. Not at all, _Xavier thought back. He looked up toward Prodigy, who was surprised to see that Xavier's expression was stricken with grief, a few tears rolling down his cheeks. _But I think you—and everyone else here—deserves to know the truth. Colonel Fury and I have been communicating back and forth, trying to piece together everything—and although we still don't have all the answers, we do know some._

_ Do you know Laurie Collins?_

"Laurie… Collins?" Prodigy asked, confused. Shaking his head, he continued, "No. Never heard of her. Why-?"

_ I thought—I'd have liked to believe, at least—that most of you had little idea what was really happening on this island. And it appears I was right. Laurie Collins—she was an Acolyte, assigned to influence Jamie Madrox's trial. But she failed, and before we could capture her she, along with several others, teleported away. But curiously, I'm not detecting her among any of you, and Colonel Fury told me none of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents ran into her, either. Her powers would have been quite the benefit in a battle like this, but she wasn't there. So where is she? You all seem particularly shaken up by the possibility that Magneto could have killed your own. Which leaves me with a rather morbid option, but one which is by far the likeliest—she was killed, and then her very existence erased from your minds._

Prodigy was just about to cry out in protest, but stopped himself—as, it seems, did the other Acolytes grouped behind him. Now that he thought back… who WAS the Acolyte they had sent to Jamie Madrox's trial? He honestly couldn't remember. There was Blink, and Rockslide, and one of the Five, but they weren't…

Wait.

"The Five-in-One," Prodigy said. "They… they had a psychic connection to everyone in the island. I didn't think they would EVER do such a thing, but… but they could have, and…"

_And that's not even the worst part. Do you also remember "Legion"?My son? Less then fifteen minutes ago, he died. But as he died—I heard his cries, psychically. In a fraction of a second, he told me everything. Who was really providing the power for this entire island._

"'Who'?" Prodigy asked. "You mean _what_. I was in charge of channeling the experimental power source Magneto had found to use, and it was ununtrium, under extreme pressure—"

_He was lying. The power source—the power source was David- Legion._

"But—that's not-" Prodigy began. "Wait… how could you possibly know he died while getting us….?"

_If you'll allow me, I can explain. And, once we finish digging out all this mess, I'll have an ample amount of proof…_

* * *

"Wait! Do you hear that?" Shadowcat asked, putting her head down towards the ground, at the bottom of the small sinkhole excavation she, Moonstar, and some of the other X-Men had started to help dig out.

"Who, Professor Xavier?" one of the Multiples asked. "I think he's speaking to everyone—"

"No, not _that_!" Shadowcat hissed, motioning for Jamie to stay quiet. "Below."

"Help! Anyone up there? Heeeellp!"

It was just barely audible, but it was clearly Pyro's voice.

"Pyro?!" Moonstar yelled back down. "What's going on? Are the other—the other prisoners with you down there?"

It was a few seconds before a reply came back. "Yeah, it's me… I don't how you all got here, but we're trapped—all of us—inside one a' the cells down here! There's a little light comin' in through a crack in the ceiling… The whole place down here collapsed on top of us, but we managed to—mostly—get inside one 'a these reinforced cells right before the whole thing came down. Jean and Gambit are in here with me, though they're both unconscious… some Acolytes are trapped in here too, we've called a temporary truce given the situation."

"Wait… Pyro, where's Rogue?" Shadowcat yelled. "I was told she was with you guys, too!"

"That's the thing…" Pyro said hesitantly. "Rogue and two others—they didn't make it in before the collapse—I don't know if it's possible if they survived or not, but we're afraid to dig outwards without more bloody rocks collapsin' on top of 'em…"

"Then we dig as fast as we can!" one of the Multiple clones yelled back, splitting into five more Jamies.

"I'm gonna phase down there, see if I can help," Shadowcat yelled.

Giving a glance back at Moonstar and the others as they immediately began quickening their pace at digging through the rubble, Shadowcat phased into the ground, hoping against hope that her friend was still alive somewhere down there.

* * *

Prodigy wasn't sure when he had fallen to his knees.

But the information Xavier had given to him—as well as everyone else in the vicinity—was simply sickening. He had felt dizzy as he began to piece it all together.

He was tempted to dismiss it all as lies, but it just made too much _sense_. The Five-in-One had to be behind most—if not all—of this, he knew it. They were in the Hub, and they were behind most of the day-to-day communication between different parties on Genosha, coordinating the building efforts—they had to KNOW Legion had really been Genosha's power source, and since they had gone silent even before the sinkhole had opened up, they must've purposefully cut themselves off from the others for a reason he couldn't fathom. Why NOW, of all times?

Worse still, they were probably long gone. Apparently sometime shortly before the sinkhole had opened up, Blink—who had been captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers and held in a temporary cell on one the helijets—had abruptly sprung back into consciousness, elbowed a trooper before he could do anything, and then immediately teleported out. Given the timing, she had certainly gone to get the Five-in-One, for whatever reason.

More disturbing still was the fact that Blink had been zapped repeatedly with those power-nullifying guns, yet she had still teleported away. It hadn't been nearly long enough for their effects to have worn off yet—they had just recently worn off of Prodigy himself, despite the fact that he had been one of the first waves of Acolytes shot with the guns. (Worse still, the bits of information that his Mutant telepathic powers apparently classified as "knowledge" confirmed that Xavier was not lying—at the very least, he was telling them what he _thought_ to be true.)

That shouldn't have been _possible_. The guns nullified EVERYONE'S Mutant powers, even Magneto's- who was one of the most advanced, powerful Mutants around. And yet it hadn't phased Blink.

Prodigy barely looked up as Nick Fury—flanked by a few S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers all carrying their power-nullifying weapons—walked up, looking down at him.

"Well, son, you've been given the rundown," Nick Fury said, taking a toothpick out of his mouth and raising his voice so that every one of the Acolytes nearby could hear him. "So, you—and everyone ELSE here—has a decision to make. We're all tired, we're all beat- worn, hurt, bloody. But if you want to carry on this stupid charade—or any of you other Acolytes—we'll still oblige. Thing is, even though you've narrowed our numbers considerably with this stupid sinkhole stunt of yours, we still—"

"Wait," Prodigy said, speaking up again as he looked up at the S.H.I.E.L.D. colonel standing in front of him. "_We _didn't make that sinkhole. What—you think we would have just BURIED that many of our own?"

"That's exactly what I think," Fury said, putting to the toothpick back in his mouth and chewing it absentmindedly.

"Well, you're wrong," Prodigy said. "Even if Magneto or the Five-in-One DID, none of the rest of us would EVER—"

"_I_ did!" Boom Boom shouted out from her position a few dozen yards away, having been silent under Surge's watchful eye until now. "I placed my own charges all over this place—it was the only way to stop them!"

Prodigy was simply dumbstruck at the admission. Tabitha seemed almost PROUD of her decision.

After a few moments of silence, Prodigy simply yelled back dejectedly, "So… you did what you had to, right? Sacrifice some of us, and who knows how many more down below, just so you could take out SOME of the S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers…"

"Exactly!" Boom Boom said, relieved that Prodigy apparently saw her point of view. "You get what I did, right? It was them or us—"

"You're exactly like Magneto!" Prodigy yelled, though as sapped and burned-out as he looked given how much his worldview had been destroyed in the past few minutes, he looked like he was using all his remaining energy just to get his voice loud enough so she could hear. "Using us all like pawns… gambling with our lives…"

"I wasn't USING you, you idiot, you were in the—"

"….Surge, is it?" Prodigy asked, looking sadly at the Brotherhood member, who looked back, curious as to why she was being addressed. "Do what YOU have to do."

Surge's confused look slowly turned to a smile, and one her metal gauntlets again connected with the side of Tabitha's head, knocking her unconscious.

"….Well," Nick Fury said after a few moments of tense silence, "Now that THAT'S been ironed out, what I was SAYING is that although I can see some of the Acolytes' powers coming back, we still have our power-sapping guns. Not to mention the X-Men and Brotherhood members watching our backs. So you all have a choice—you can try to fight us again, and although you'll maybe bring down a few of us, you'll fail, and you'll be brought down again—HARD. OR, you could give up this whole idea—seeing as how it's in ruins and everything—and help us dig out any survivors, right before we arrest you and take you back to the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. prison capable of handling you."

Looking down at Prodigy, Nick Fury said out of one side of his mouth, "So, how about you, Glasses?"

"I…. I'll go with the latter," Prodigy said softly, his shoulders slumping.

"Smart choice," Fury said. Turning his head up to face the rest of the Acolyte crowd, he continued, "Now, how about the rest of you?"

The End


End file.
